Citation needed

If you didn’t watch Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe last night, go and do so now.  I’ll wait.

For all of his frippery, it is a brilliantly incisive programme, and he has the news media bang to rights. But for me, the most troubling and thought-provoking part was the interview with Heather Brooke, who compared news reporting in the States with the equivalent in the UK.  In the U.S, she said, reporters always name their sources in order to lend credibility to their story.  In the UK by contrast, hacks very often do not name their source, indeed they very often have to maintain their discretion and the good will of their regular informants or they would very soon find themselves without any news sources at all.  The only significant journalists are those with a network of informants.

By the nature of this arcane boy’s club of favours and duplicity, the veracity of the information supplied by these anonymous sources  -with no possible repercussions for the donor- is variable, at best.  Ms Brooke mentioned the case of Jean Charles de Menezes where, within hours 0f his death, ‘Police sources’ had started to feed the media smears on the poor sod’s character in order to try and legitimise the travesty.

As she says: that is not journalism, that is information control.  By relying on this drip feed of ready-mixed news from government sources, and unwilling to flex any journalistic muscle in order to affirm the facts as they actually are, the media have become a conduit of propaganda and have failed the public in this most fundamental of professional responsibilities.

Which brings me to us lot in the political blogosphere.  How often do we amateur journalists (for that is what we are, to a greater or lesser extent) have a primary news source of our own?  Sure there are examples where bloggers have ‘scooped’ the MSM, but do we not for the vast majority of the time simply link to an online newspaper as source data and base our own commentary on that? I know I do.  But if this source is compromised by the absence of even the most basic diligence on the part of the ‘proper’ journalists, what is it that we actually know? 

Is the ‘sphere  just an echo-chamber of Chinese whispers, with the truth lost in the white noise of personal bias and hyperbole?   I don’t know.  The ‘Net has evolved this way and will continue to do so; maybe we will evolve with it to optimise the signal/noise ratio.  Maybe professional journalism as we know it will fade away and become something more akin to rigorously sourced blogging, which we do already see on occasion.

*Trite pomposity ahead*

We have to remember that not all information is created equal, so it is incumbent on us to question everything if we are to do anything other than fumble in ignorance.

Unequal

Updated to take into account comments by MrRob. I’m glad someone is bothering to pick me up on stuff, to be honest.  Beat’s the shit out of the standard echochamber

This is been  everywhere already, but I’m playing catch-up after this weekend’s blogging inertia:

As has been pointed out ad nauseam, ad infinitum: What difference does it make how big the gap is between the highest and the lowest earners, so long as the poorest are getting richer?  Should not the real question be: Are the poorest better off now then they once were?  To compare oneself to the  richest (or anyone else for that matter) is both irrelevant and the politics of envy.   What someone else earns does not affect me in the slightest, beyond perhaps provoking a jealous desire to do better. Didn’t think this statement through;  ‘cause it bloody does, it’s just not entirely relevant to the point I’m trying to make.

An entirely separate question is that of social mobility, i.e. how hard is it to better oneself and become more affluent. Well if you work at it, attain sought-after skills and experience, and given the truly demented dilution of the skills pool these days- it’s relatively simple to do well in modern Britain. In principal, anyway. 

Problem is, the state will fight you every step of the way.   If you are on benefits and out of work to start with, you will be punished for attaining even minimum wage work.  Case in point: relatives of mine are a couple with three young kids, neither of them have any real qualifications, but both have taken minimum wage jobs in retail.  Now the consequence of this conscious decision to not be a burden on the taxpayer is a substantial net loss of income.  They have also had to struggle while jobless friends have more disposable cash and far easier access to better housing.  Labour have done nothing to promote social mobility; they have done plenty to prevent it.

It’s not like it would be particularly hard to implement policy in favour of self-betterment either;  for the same cost of the 2.5% VAT decrease, the government could’ve raised the income tax threshold to 10 grand and taken about 3 million people out of the tax system altogether.   That would have shown some interest in the welfare of the worst off.  But the government has shown that it is more concerned with keeping the client state in their pocket and ruining the prospects of a generation, just so they can retain hold of the reigns for a bit longer.

Anyway, lets look at the damn report(my comments in red):

The report finds:

1. Parents of public school-educated sons can expect their children to be paid eight per cent more by their mid-20s than boys educated at state schools; Erm, okay.  Public schools are better, being unfettered by the meddlings of politicians. What’s the takeaway lesson here?
2. At school poor British white boys are well below the national average by the time they are seven, deteriorating further after they are 11.  No hope, no expectation to try, no examples to follow.  Welcome to modern Britain.
3. Women are paid 21 per cent less than the national average, despite women into their 40s having better qualifications than men;  This is not a surprise. They generally take different career paths and take several years off (on average) to have kids.
4. Britain has one of the most unequal societies in the world, with income inequality ahead of Ireland, Japan, Spain, Canada, Germany and France. Inequality is worse in England than Wales and Scotland;  Load of wank. This figure means nothing (we might have a load of rich people throwing the trend by living here) and we’re equivalent to the OECD average anyway, see pic. h/t Burning our money
5. A typical professional on the verge of retiring is worth nearly £1 million compared with just £59,000 for someone who is long-term unemployed.  Not wanting to go all Daily Mail here, but: get a job?
6. Poverty rates are among the worst in Europe, with only Italy, Spain and Greece faring worse.  What the fuck do they think poverty is? Do please differentiate between RELATIVE and ABSOLUTE poverty.  We don’t have much in the way of shanty towns round these parts. See Tom Harris – who I’m liking more by the day.
7. Average and below average White British children are less likely than those from minority ethnic groups to go on to higher education.  My original comment here vaguely alluded to ‘ethnics’ having a better work ethic than the ‘natives’.   What I meant to imply was the documented superior academic performance of students of South and South-east Asian descent here and in the US.  Apparently this is due to a greater cultural fear of failure and generally higher aspirations toward academic success.  MrRob rather cynically suggests in the comments that positive discrimination may have a part in this too. Didn’t occur to me, to be honest.  I’m so sheltered.   After further heated analysis in the comments, we have ascertained that this whole statement in the original Telegraph article is almost certainly bollocks and has no factual basis in the published study.  I move that it be struck from the record.
8. More than half of children educated at private schools, and more than 40 per cent of those with professional parents, go to the top Russell group of universities. Converse of number 2: Those who are guided and have examples to follow will do better. This is not rocket science.
9. Two-thirds of those with professional parents receive firsts or upper seconds, but only half of those with unskilled parents.  I wonder why?

The socialists have done their damage again. It just remains to be seen whether Blu-Labour can reign back the destructive influence of the state on the lives of the lower tiers of society.  

It is not difficult: all they need to do is less.

Further procrastination

Bear with me.

Pointless fact for the day:

The rouble has been redenominated 7 times since 1922 to lose a few pesky 00’s. Taking all into account, one current rouble is equal to 5*10^15 original roubles.

Whilst we're on the rare subject of Soviet monetary policy, I particularly like the 1947 redenomination. You know how it is, money getting worth toss all,  need to lose a few 00s, but printing new notes is such a pain...well worry not, Ivan figured it out.

They simply confiscated and destroyed 90% of the money in circulation.

There’s an idea for you, Gordon….

WTF interlude.

I have actually got a couple of things drafted to make up for depriving you poor souls of my brilliance for 4 whole days, but I didn’t think this should pass without comment:

Wha…?

Nope,  I got nothin’.

Oh for fu…

…ck’s sake:

I have to be honest, it’s Friday afternoon and I barely have the energy to rail at this one. 
But I’ll do my best.

The move follows complaints from a school, whose children use the pool, that pupils are upset by "open nudity" and needed more privacy.

Admittedly, looking up from towelling off to see a 60 year-old pair of shrivelled apricots swinging past would probably not be the highlight of my day, but I fail to see what there is to ‘protect’ kids from.  Apart from the sad sight of inevitability, perhaps.

However, Bob Demott, Torridge Pool's general manager, said asking members to wear a swimsuit during school visiting times was a reasonable compromise.

He said the measure was a safeguard for both the children and adults.

No, it’s not fucking reasonable you spineless cockpiece, and I still fail to see what they are being safeguarded from.  There is nothing inherently damaging about nudity; that is what we fucking look like.  Nudity being seen as indecent is an puritanical concept in the first place and has no basis in rationality. If these kids are ‘offended’ after hundreds of generations of children who got along just fine, then it’s because someone has told them they should be.

Local councillor Gaye Tabor added: "Children need to learn to swim for their own safety. They also have a right to a certain amount of privacy."

Get fucked you righteous harpy.  They have neither the right nor need for other specimens of their gender to be hidden away from them in the changing room.   What kind of warped lesson is it teaching them when adult swimmers minding their own business are herded out of the room when  they arrive?

And why is this an issue just for schools (or more specifically, this school)? Why has no-one ever complained when kids come in their own time?   Is it by any chance because that is when they are free from their hang-wringing paedofinder teachers?

On that note:

You can’t find bombs with coathangers

“Stand back! The magic is about to happen! “

Since I'm on a bit of a Woo-bash recently it pleases me to read this today:

Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?  You may of heard of ‘Dowsing’ before.  It’s when the bloke with the y-shaped twig or a pair of metal rods goes looking for things underground using said implements for guidance.  The concept being that the rods will cross or the twig will lean toward whatever it is you’re looking for; historically water, oil or precious metals.  The problem is, as ever, that it is bollocks. 

But it is bollocks which is especially susceptible to the ideomotor effect and confirmation bias.  Which is to say, when you’re dowsing for something, and you know where that something is or is likely to be, you will unconsciously move your ‘detectors’ towards it without realising it.  And when you don’t know where something is, you will disregard your failures to find as mistakes in methodology or blips in the system, with your eventual trial-and-error success being attributed to the ‘correct’ application of the technique.  By the way, it is really rather easy to find water: dig anywhere and sooner or later you will find some of it if you go deep enough.

Anyway, it’s relatively simple to disprove this whole concept as self-delusion,  just ask Mr Randi.  Whenever a proper, double blinded test is set up, dowsers never do better than can be expected from random guessing.

Which brings us to today. Let me just say that defence procurement is always an expensive, inefficient clusterfuck of an operation; and I guess the Iraqi military is no better.  That said, I don’t think even our MoD would blow 52million quid on magic sticks:

In November, Mr McCormick, a former Merseyside police officer, told The Times that his devices, which consist of little more than a telescopic antenna on a molded plastic handle, are able to detect explosives in the same way as a dowsing rod finds water.

Yes, exactly the same way - that’s the problem.

Thousands of the devices are in use at military and police check points across Baghdad where they are used to search vehicles and pedestrians for explosives. In recent months hundreds of people have died after car bombers were able to penetrate the security cordon supposed to protect the centre of the Iraqi capital.

This is where I get angry.  This is also why I find mysticism and woo so very offensive in modern times.  People have their little superstitions and eccentricities, and for the most part they’re harmless.  But then something like this comes along and shows you what happens when you allow ignorance and magical thinking to thrive uncritically.  In this case an ex-plod has gone out there and cast a veil of false-security over men whose very lives depend on their upmost vigilance.  People may very well have died because of this.

The American magician and sceptic James Randi has condemned the bomb detectors as a “blatant fraud” and challenged Mr McCormick to prove that the ADE-651 really can find explosives, with the offer of $1 million if he succeeds. The challenge has not been taken up. Senior US military sources have also expressed doubts that it could ever work.

Of cause he didn’t.  He can’t prove it, and why would he gamble his whole enterprise over that measly extra mill when he can sell car aerials for eight grand a pop?

Mr McCormick told The Times that his device was being criticised because of its crude appearance.

He added: “We have been dealing with doubters for ten years. One of the problems we have is that the machine does look a little primitive. We are working on a new model that has flashing lights.

Flashing fucking lights? You odious little toad.  You reckon you can ratchet it up to ten grand if “Mark 2” looks complicated enough?   I don’t know who I hold more contempt for: you for selling this to people who may very well be killed because of it; or the Iraqi military for being balls-out idiotic enough to buy it.  No hang on, it’s you.

Ah well,  I bet it’ll be fun to be an ex-copper in prison. 

A police source said: “We are satisfied the bomb detectors don’t work.”

I want to say something sarcastic here, but I’m frankly relieved they have established just that, and that the whole world isn’t irredeemably, arse-bitingly stupid. 

Just most of it.

*Update* I missed the Beeb’s take on it here (it has pictures and things)

I don’t care

Apparently these two scrotes had it a bit rough growing up, and this has been entered as mitigation in court.  I couldn’t care less. I’ll put it as tersely as possible:

They’ve had a harsh time growing up,  they didn’t have ‘boundaries’.  This lack of moral guidance in their development has resulted in some rather unacceptable  behaviour against their fellow man.  Well that is a problem. The obvious solution would be therefore to impose some markedly robust boundaries and plenty of time to think about what’s right and wrong.

I shall hold my breath.

In case there was any doubt

With Homeopathy, all this talk of repeated dilution and succussion and laws of ‘similars’ and ‘infinitesimals’ can be confusing to your standard open-minded layman whose wondering through the AltMed aisles at Boots.

So here is a helpful diagram provided, rather thoughtfully, by Edd Edmondson on twitter:

Hope that clears that up for you.

Follow the #Ten23 campaign for more Woo-baiting fun.

Favourite headline of the moment

From El Reg:

Israel intends to offer for export one of its latest and most terrifying military technologies: a sonic cannon or "thunder generator", powered by devasting "bunker buster" fuel-air explosive technology - used in secret Nazi superweapons of the 1940s - to deliver sound rays so powerful as to be instantly deadly to anyone hearing them.

Damn those fiendish Jooooos! OH was right; it’s not long before they kill us all.

I for one welcome our new Semitic overlords.

Washing your car the easy way

Anyone who works in an office has probably seen this one doing the rounds recently, but here you go anyway:

While they probably realised that was going to happen, it’s funnier to imagine that they didn’t.

UKIP Burqa Bollocks.

Well, they’ve managed to establish themselves as players in the political arena, they even managed to build up a bit of a rep as vaguely agreeable and libertarian, but then they had to go and  piss any credibility they may have had right up the wall:

Oh you utter clown. Is the garment broadly offensive to civilised sensibilities because it demeans women? Yes. Is it representative of several centuries of  barbarous misogyny? Yes.  Is forcing women to NOT wear it conducive to a freer and more liberal society? No, of course it fucking isn’t.

First off, who are you/we/anyone to say what someone else can and can’t wear?

Secondly, What is the most obvious outcome of an astonishingly illiberal ban like this coming to force (aside from men with beards smashing up cars and the obligatory burning effigies in Karachi)? Hint: I think you’ll be seeing a whole lot less Muslim women on the streets.

Thirdly, how stupid can you get? How does a political party like UKIP, largely seen as standing apart from the bansturbating statist feculence we’ve come to know and hate in Westminster, come to decide that the best way forward is to adopt the Daily fucking Mail as a manifesto? Jesus tap-dancing Christ.

Gee thanks Nigel; that’s another candidate off my ‘maybe’ list in May.

I could rant about this all day, but I’m not going to because it is far more important that you drag your sorry selves over to The Civil Libertarian’s gaff and cut yourself a slice of deep-fried brilliance:

 

That he does.

Use this one, Dave

Obo pointed out  the facility to me, so here’s my effort:

Brief and brainless, but I amuse myself.

We’re in the transition period people. Like it or not, these blue-rinsed tools are getting in.  So it’s time to adjust our aim.

Taking threats seriously

Don’t know what’s the matter with me lately, the snow seems to have toppled my gyros and left me unable to concentrate on anything for more than 5 minutes.  I blame that Gordon.  Mind you, if you wait long enough the interspaz feeds you it’s own blend of  PseudoRitalin to headfuck you into paying attention. 

So by now you’ve probably already heard of this bloke:

If you haven’t, I’ll summarise: Guy makes bad joke on Twitter about blowing up his local airport.  Some stroker tells the police and they confiscate all his computers and his mobile and charge him under the Terrorism Act.  What a shock.  For a decent appraisal of the farce see MTPT (rightwing legal blog who I recommend wholeheartedly).  Suppose I better mention AJ as well, even if he’s a tool.

Now subsequent to that we have this guy:

Politics student Jeremy Moulton, 19, has accused police of “overkill” after his home was raided by officers and dogs while a helicopter hovered overhead. He was arrested and cautioned after standing outside an Army cadet training base in Staines with a banner reading: “Stop training murderers”.

What a fucking bell-end.  Whatever your political viewpoints on our various military ventures, if you think a load of bored adolescents half-heartedly wanking on biscuits is equivalent to the state machining our innocent yoof into steely-eyed killers of the night, then you are officially a cock.  Anyway: ‘obligatory trite statement about defending some dull cunt’s right to free speech.’

Next, why is any of the subsequent police over-reaction not even slightly surprising beyond the initial WTF response?  This kind of  story is becoming so routine that we’re in real danger of it becoming accepted police behaviour.

So I’ve got two points on these cases and those like them:

Firstly, the police invariably say in these situations “We take all threats seriously ”.   Why? What fucking sense does that make? We encounter random bollocks everyday of our lives, but most of us use our discretion as to what is plausible and what isn’t based on context, experience and common sense.  If the police aren’t willing to do the same then what’s the point in having human police? We may as well have an algorithm monitoring all comms and issuing arrest warrants when the wrong words are  spoken or typed. No, I don’t want to give them ideas and I realise that is closer to the truth than I’d like.

Secondly and more troublingly, the police never do this off their own bat; there is always someone who puts the bubble in, and that is the group of people I despise the most.  I have more sympathy for the plod; at least they’ve got their careers to think of when they’re ticking arbitrary boxes for the home office.   But this pernicious cadre of  snitches and snoops we apparently have festering among us, they inform on their neighbours because they want to.   They are the type of Righteous who revel in being the instrument of state oppression, and who would undo another citizen for petty transgressions –real or implied- purely because they can.

You can only blame the authoritarian state for so much; there are far too many people willing to meet it halfway.

Pat Robertson = Cock

An utter fucking mong, yesterday 

It’s good to know that a man can find a place in the world despite being a swivel-eyed loony.

During a broadcast on his Christian Broadcasting Network, Mr Robertson suggested the Haiti's earthquake was divine retribution.

He said Haiti had sworn a pact with the devil when it freed itself from French colonial rule.

Really Pat?  How does that work then?

"They said, we will serve you if you will get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it's a deal," the televangelist said during the broadcast.

"Ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other," he added, comparing Haiti to its more prosperous neighbour, the Dominican Republic.

Tell me Pat;  what flavour are the windows down your way?

Your ‘thoughts’ do not help

Photocredit: Wellington Grey via Dick Puddlecote

A chum on facebook -Siv Swan- put this message up earlier, and I agree violently:

Just in case you were labouring under any delusions, your thoughts being with the people of Haiti will not actually make any difference to them. They won't lift any concrete blocks off them or bandage people, or feed or water anyone. Your thoughts, positive or negative, are in your head, and will not make the blindest bit of difference to anybody.

Quite.  If you’re going to do something, then do something.  Don’t pretend that your mawkish platitudes make the slightest bit of difference to some poor bastard stuck underneath the remnants of his house.   You can join as many Facebook groups as you like for your pseudo-compassionate circle-jerks, but all you’re really doing is assuaging your own impotent guilt with a lazy veneer of ‘doing something’.
Another FB commenter pointed us toward this quote from Conan O’Brien:

"white people will solve this problem the way that they solved the election crisis in Iran – through Facebook and Twitter status updates. In 2009, millions of white people took 35 seconds to turn their twitter profiles green, and consequently sent a very powerful message to the leaders of Iran. Their message was that they wanted their friends to know that they would stop at nothing to ensure freedom and democracy for the Iranian people. Thanks in large part to that effort Iran is now completely democratic.”

They’re saving the whole world from their armchair in Islington, one tweet at a time.

The Internet is made of Cats

Today’s awesome brought to you by Rathergood.com

So now you know.

Annoyance Aggregator

I’m having problems focussing on any given thing long enough to blog properly, so I’m going to resort to my default fallback:  The Mind-dump of subjects with one or two line semi-informed opinions and maybe a link to someone better who could be bothered.

So here we go:

We have far too many tertiary-education institutions, many of which exist apparently for their own sake and to insulate the egos of the academically ungifted. Reduce the number of universities = more money for real academia.  See the Mash and Constantly Furious.

Right, what next? Ah yes:

Excellent article from the Guardian there, showing how the same groups so concerned with saving the planet go out of their way to stifle this most obvious source of clean energy -which would also go a long way toward energy independence.  Yes, people like this chap…in the Guardian…on the same day:

Well, can’t accuse them of not being  ‘balanced’. 

Next!

The more things change, the more they stay the fucking same.  Apparently aware of how well being brow-beaten and berated by an incessant and intrusive nanny state resonates with the voters; Call-me-Dave is going to carry the torch of nose-prodding banfuckery into another political generation. The prize twat. See Leg_iron, he’s got this wrapped as usual.

Next up I’ve got Will Hutton’s article from Sunday which I never got round to commenting on:

Hutton bemoans the inherent inequalities of societies; how people from wealthy backgrounds going to private schools do better than poor people who end up going to state schools.  His unspoken premise is that the playing fields should be levelled (ie. take the poor kids from their poor homes and close private schools).   Life is unfair, Will, and it isn’t a problem for you to ‘fix’ by even more of the statist interfering largely responsible for the poorest being in that position in the first place.  Go and read Simon Cooke’s take on it here and here.

And finally, on the back of the goatfuck which was the local/central government’s handling of the snow and road-gritting situation….

…..we have this brilliant but infuriating piece by Anna Raccoon.   It is a sterling example of everything that is wrong with state interference.

 

Ah, that’s better.

So being part of that euro-thingy has some perks..

Via Old Holborn I am made aware of this:

The use by police of terror laws to stop and search people without grounds for suspicion are illegal, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled.

It’s a sorry state of affairs when it takes foreigners from one of the numerous European institutions to whom we answer to protect our personal freedoms. I’m pleased none the less, although -as with DNA records- I’ll be surprised if they don’t just ignore it.

*Update* This particular euro-thingy is separate to the euro-thingy which is the EU.  That euro-thingy remains good for fuck-all.  As you were.

Evolution in 60 seconds

Feeling significant?

The Brown Bunker Stands United

What a happy story in the Graun:

Gordon Brown and his chief election strategist Lord Mandelson today promised Labour MPs that the upcoming election campaign will present Labour as "the real changemakers", led by a united team which would put the economic recovery at the heart of the party's pitch to voters.

Well thank fuck, I guess we should all just forget the election and sleep soundly in our beds, because our ruling pack of shit-flinging apefolk have decided to ‘stand together’.  I mean that changes everything, doesn’t it?  I thought the main problem with this administration was that it had all the intelligence, direction and composure of a crack-addled spider monkey with it’s cock in a vice.  Apparently all that’s been missing these past 12 years is a bit of backslapping team-cohesion. Fancy.

The prime minister was flanked not only by Mandelson, but by Douglas Alexander, the election co-ordinator and Harriet Harman, director of day-to-day campaigning. It is the first time the triumvirate have been presented to Labour MPs and appears to be an attempt by Brown to convince sceptics he has an agreed team with clear roles and strategy.

Really? Best of luck with that.  A group of people less comfortable in each others’ company I have never seen.

Brown, who received a warm response from the parliamentary Labour party meeting, said: "Economic recovery will be the platform for Labour's victory.”

This is pure, refined, weapons-grade irony right here.  The (internationally disproportionate ) requirement for an economic recovery will almost certainly be the platform for a Labour defeat.

"The choice at the next election is not between change and no change but between right change and wrong change. We cannot and will not fight the election on small ideas but on big ideas."

Unfortunately for us, the only option is ‘No Change’. Besides, you wouldn’t know what was right for this country if God himself burned careful instructions into stone and then nailed them to Mandy’s face,  you cycloptic ringpiece.

Gordon, to use one of my favourite film quotes: You don't know whether you're shot, fucked, powder-burned, or snakebit.  Economics is a mystery to you, indeed I feel you must lack the common sense which God gave goats.  You were never an ‘Iron Chancellor’, you were a pathetic mistake cloaked by favourable circumstances and left unhindered by an apathetic  public and incompetent media.  All you and your craven cabal of mediocrities know how to do is spend other people’s money, and keep spending it in the hope that you can remain in your reality-insulated bubble for just a few more grubby moments.   

There is however, none left, and all of your core-voters are bought and paid for by those same misbegotten proceeds from real people.   And they are becoming increasingly aware of the axe that surely has to swing, even if it’s not entirely obvious that you do.

So reality is about to take a giant shit on your parade, and – regardless of the blue-tinted facsimile which is bound to supplant you – we are going to enjoy every lingering second of your political demise. You and your whole feculent crowd of talentless parasites.

Best of luck with the campaign there, though. You’re looking positively fucking regent.

That’s it; I’m sick of shouting at these fucking idiots.  Lets get this pantomime of democracy over and done with so we can catch our breath for the next act. 

Apparently Atlas is Shrugging

There’s a great piece over at planet Vulcan:

I met a successful entrepreneur the other day who told me he was on strike. He built up a good company, ran it for many years, and sold out. He is young enough, energetic and wise enough to be able to run another good business. He has no current intention of doing so. He finds the tax and regulatory background now too hostile. He asks, why should people like him bother when the government is so keen to pile ever more burdens on them? They accuse him of being rich. They don’t encourage him to work hard. They just see his past success as something to raid to pay for their mistakes.

They’re right not to bother, the wealth they create will be confiscated and the associated jobs will be taxed all the way out of the country.  We don’t like successful people round these parts, as they have plainly made that money from the sweat and tears of honest working men. And they eat babies.

Atlas Shrugged was an unsubtle book; filled with crude characterisations, sweeping generalisations and unsympathetic protagonists.  Yet reading it recently, it rang all kinds of unpleasant bells.  Again guys: it’s supposed a warning, not a blueprint.

And as that entrepreneur from Redwood’s anecdote might tell you: when you’ve somehow found yourself in the unenviable position of residing within the pages of Ayn Rand, it’s best to head towards Galt’s Gulch than stay in a People’s Republic.

Just shut up you fool

Ok, I’m flagging a bit now, and I’m not sure I can still feel my face. However I'm a trooper and I’ll leave you with this short ‘un.

Today Gordon Brown, guardian of all we hold dear and provider of comfort and succour to all his subjects, decreed that gas supplies shall not run out in these times of increasing demand:

"Supplies are not running out," Mr Brown said in his podcast issued from Downing Street.

The prime minister added: "We've got plenty of gas in our own back yard - the North Sea - and we also have access to the large reserves in Norway and Netherlands via pipelines."

And because he of the accursed faecal touch just had to say it, our ‘own back yard’ responded to Jonah in the manner which we’ve all come to expect:

THE oil giant BP will pile the pressure on Britain’s stretched gas supplies tomorrow when it shuts down a large gas network in the North Sea.

The takeaway point here, Gordon? Don’t presume to speak for something you have no real control over.  Although, I suppose that wouldn’t leave you much to talk about, would it?

I agree: #BrownMustStay

Second up on tonight’s recap of laziness is the coup that didn’t happen among the Labour ranks.  The failures-at-life in this case being Geoff “My surname is now pejorative” Hoon and Patricia “My reign at the DOH killed 21% more babies” Hewitt.

Now for the purpose of this post, I am going to work on the personal opinion that Gordon brown is the most politically inept, intellectually objectionable and downright incompetent Prime Minister this country has ever seen.  If there has ever been a worse PM, he was certainly restrained from doing as much tangible harm.

Now –please stay with me here- assuming that this is the case, and that the leader of your political party, indeed of the country, is functionally better use as a doorstop, Just how fucking useless must YOU be in being unable to rouse your fellow verminous politicos (people who thrive on just such weakness) in a move against him? Jesus.

Now take a peek at the twitter hashtag #BrownMustStay.  This was(mainly) where web literate Labour types voiced their support of the Great Leader.  Trying to understand the mind of these people is really rather difficult, I mean it’s obvious to even they that their leader is less use than tits on a fish, surely?  To my mind these verbal supporters must fall into one of three camps:

1. Tories; who know their best chance at election victory relies on this cockend remaining at the helm as we circle the drain.  Observe Call-Me-Dave pulling his punches at PMQs, lest he accidentally remove his most valuable asset.
2. Labour realists; who understand how fundamentally rogered the country is, and realise their best hope to bring them back from oblivion is to lose this next election and blame all of the austerity of the coming years on the evil Tories. They then ride this into re-election in 4-5 years time.  These people are wise.
3. Labour fantasists; those who actually believe the Broon actually passes for a functional human being, and that he really is the ‘right man for the job’.  They also talk about ‘unity’ in this trying time, even though this man and the cabal of incompetents surrounding him are everything that is wrong with their party.   These people are morons.

But back to Geoff and Patty.  If there are lessons and textbooks in such things; theirs must surely serve as how not to run a political rebellion.  Their call for a secret ballot was never going to happen, but presumably they wanted to rock the boat and set the scene for someone more credible like the boy Miliband to step up to the plate.  Except he wasn’t up to the task, and neither was anyone else; such is the supine and spineless nature of the modern PLP.  What a gangfuck.

So their destruction is assured and the Tories will win, but with all likelihood a tiny majority – because they too are hand-flapping, populist fuckwits. 

As it has been said before: It’s a shame they can’t both lose.

Quelle surprise

First off of the things I couldn’t be bothered to blog about was the utter fucking certainty of the outcome of the Harperson’s day in court.

To recap: she had two previous convictions for speeding and was six points off a ban.  She turns up for some reflected publicity off of some local tragedy in her  constituency and rear-ended a resident’s car while on the phone.  She then didn’t bother stopping and giving details, and drove off while shouting out the window “you know where to find me”. 

To tot up the offences and associated penalties:

• Failing to give particulars or to report an accident within 24 hours gets you 5-10 points.
• Driving without due care and attention gets you 3-9 points.
• Using a mobile phone gets 3 points.

What did she get?

However, after submissions by her legal team, Miss Harman was given three points, to add to the six points on her licence, and a £350 fine.

Half of fuck-all.  What a shocker.

Legal experts said she had got off lightly because she was charged with only one offence, rather than two for causing an accident and driving while on the phone.

For fuck’s sake, why? The question is rhetorical, as the potential for driving licence loss and personal/professional inconvenience  would not stay their hand in nailing the likes of you and I to the fucking wall for the same contemptuous behaviour.

A CPS spokesman said that she had been treated “no differently to anyone else”.

Not fucking much, you spineless pile of cunts.

Al Jahom  had this one covered before it happened, and even his modest prediction for the outcome was way above the eventual derisory and cynical effort on behalf of the ‘justice’ system.

The sooner the political class –and they are a protected and elite caste unto themselves- are burned out of town the better.

Hibernation

‘Scuse the delay.  The snow stopped me from getting to my blog…or summat. Normal service will resume when I’ve made another drink.  Ah, here it comes.

One minute please, people.

Snow Day

Since today was written off, I had every intention of getting down to some of the brilliantly written and incisive blogging you’ve come to expect from me. Ahem.

What has actually happened is that I’ve discovered my rather impressive alcohol cache and have to ride this one out in the traditional British style.

Behold:

So, whilst the chances of me ill-advisedly blogging later in the manner of your local pub gobshite are fairly high; today’s action is all happening on twitter. Do pop along.

Alternatively feel free to put any old random waffle in the comments you need to get off your chest. I’m here all night.

Oh and I’m all about cocktails today, so suggestions please.

The Devil spake thusly

Pop across to the Devil’s Kitchen, where our profane ringleader has something to to tell you. 

Do it now.

A polemic from the leader of the UK Libertarian Party

Terrorism tediousness

“I can see your cock. Teehee.”

Casting back to Dec 25th, and having braved the two most vexatious airport and border systems in the developed world (us and the yanks) to spend the Christmas period Stateside, we hear from watching the news on the hotel room TV that some rug-butting twat has done his best to blow up a plane.  My immediate thoughts were not ones of concern for the immediate safety of me, the missus and my fellow travellers when we flew home, but rather how much reactionary cavity-searching fuckery this was going to provoke.

And lo, it came to pass that the airlines flying into the States had to turn on the seatbelt lights, prevent people from  using the toilets and switch off the in-flight entertainment an hour before they landed.  Why? Because you have to be seen to be doing something, even if that something is pointless.  Take that, Osama.

And that "last hour" of a flight could easily stretch out for two or more, if the plane falls into a holding pattern before landing. During that final hour, or two, or three, Rossides wanted passengers to keep their hands visible at all times, refrain from holding anything in their laps, never reach into their carry-on bags, and obey a variety of other humiliating and pointless regulations that would make great spirit-breakers for serial-killer inmates in a supermax prison, but do nothing to stop a prepared terrorist from damaging a plane.

Mind you, I think the TSA just don’t like flight passengers.

Since then we’ve had all manner of posturing twaddle from Barry and Broon; embassies and consulates have been recalled (and then opened again), intelligence agencies have been shouted at, and oooh it’s been ever so dramatic.  Everyone has been falling over themselves to point fingers and look decisive. 

First up we have Barry whose decreed that those coming from known terrorist hotspots should be looked at really carefully.  Hmm, I would’ve thought they should have been doing that anyway, but hey ho.  And our esteemed leader, never one to pass up an opportunity to make himself look a bigger dickhead, has decided we’re all going to have to let airport staff look at us without clothes, which predictably enough, won’t fucking work for the stated purpose.  Rather amusingly he has has come unstuck on account of the cheeeeelllldren.   Of course naked pictures of anyone isn’t automatically porn by any reasonable definition, but bollocks; whatever keeps this illiberal and grubby snooping at bay works for me.  More on this at Charlotte Gore’s place.

Like Timmy and Obo I have to commend to you this chap, who makes a very salient point with regards to security policy:

Instead, the Israelis have their scanning booths in bomb-proof glass, so that even a large bomb can be contained without needing to evacuate an entire terminal. In short, they have prepared better, trained better, and put the right technology in, rather than opting for a knee-jerk response.

Israel, as we know, is going to be a major target for bombers. Yet El Al haven't had a security incident since 2002, when a passenger accidentally boarded with a handgun, and passengers are advised to arrive no earlier to fly with El Al than to fly to Tel Aviv with other carriers. In other words, they achieve better security in the same amount of time. Oughtn't we learn from the real experts on airport security?

Yes we should, but pretty much any government policy you care to mention is based not on rational evaluation of experience and evidence; but upon knee-jerk populism and block-headed incomprehension of the issues.

I have to also point you in the direction of this tirade by Christopher Hitchens on the American TSA, which is equally transferrable to our own shower:

Why do we fail to detect or defeat the guilty, and why do we do so well at collective punishment of the innocent? The answer to the first question is: Because we can’t—or won’t. The answer to the second question is: Because we can. The fault here is not just with our endlessly incompetent security services, who give the benefit of the doubt to people who should have been arrested long ago or at least had their visas and travel rights revoked. It is also with a public opinion that sheepishly bleats to be made to “feel safe.” The demand to satisfy that sad illusion can be met with relative ease if you pay enough people to stand around and stare significantly at the citizens’ toothpaste. My impression as a frequent traveler is that intelligent Americans fail to protest at this inanity in case it is they who attract attention and end up on a no-fly list instead. Perfect.

There is no way to make air travel 100% safe from terrorism.  I see the point of measures like screening passengers, bomb detectors, X-ray machines and the like.  But at some point we will have to say “This is the best we can do. Them’s the risks” and leave the rest to the vigilance of staff and our fellow passengers.

Or if that doesn’t float your boat,  we can enact a new deranged performance of security-themed theatre every time someone in a beard looks at us cross-eyed.

Demolition fail

Enough seriousness, time for some YouTube clip regurgitation - which is what you mouthbreathing peasants want anyway.

Some things just shouldn’t be done on the cheap, and I’d argue that demolition in a populated area should be considered one of them. First sterling example from China:

And then we have this frankly brilliant effort from Turkey:

Oh well done sir, you couldn’t do that again if you tried.

Of course sometimes the builders do the job for you:

I think we used those contractors for our place…

I see dead people.

Well not really, but I’m still up and am somewhat twisted.  It’s like if you wait long enough, you don’t need sleep anymore.

Feeling the creative urge nonetheless, I’m going to fly through some headlines and give you my kneejerk reaction.  Which is everything you need to know, plainly. Right, brace yourselves:

Public sector pay races ahead in recession – except mine, so down with this kind of thing.  Ah well, the money will be worth fuck-all soon enough and we’re all going to end up eating stolen raw carrots and drinking water out of toilets.

Jobs for illegals at Home Office as dozens of NHS and public bodies ignore immigration laws – this left me thoroughly unmoved and completely unsurprised.  One rule for us etc. The Border Agency only exists to keep out skilled immigrants.

Islamic group plans Wootton march – I hope the police don’t turn up and the lot of them are killed with paving slabs.  Similarly, I hope that cunt leaves a return address on those letters he’s sending to the bereaved so that he can meet with a slow accident.

Ken Clarke says Tories cannot rule out putting up taxes –  DO YOU THINK? REALLY? FUCK ME.

UK and US to fund anti-terror police unit in Yemen – Well why the fuck not? It’s only money. We can use all those lessons we’ve learned doing away with terrorism in the rest of the middle-east; we’ve got that shit nailed.

The thin VERY blue line: Porn shame of hundreds of police staff disciplined over internet use – Literally wanking public money up the wall.  Can’t fault it really; we all would if we could.

That’s yer lot, I’m here all week. Tip your waitress.

 

Disappointing mix of Woo and Worthy

Despite our selfish reputation, we Libertarians hold charities in high regard.  In fact, I would argue that we have a much higher opinion of human nature and our innate altruism than any of the established political parties, who instead feel the need to compel us to be nice by distributing our money for us.  Conversely, we generally assume that if people are allowed to keep any of their own damn cash, they’ll give some of the spare bits to causes they care about.  I haven’t got the stats handy, but I recall that history holds this out; countries with lower tax burdens generally give proportionally more to charity.

Anyway,  all that said, the one charity I’ve always held to be a perfectly worthy cause and my personal benchmark for such institutions is the RNLI.  These are guys and gals who risk life and limb on a voluntary basis, keeping our coastlines safe.   And because they are completely untouched by the deathly hand of the state, they are really good at it.  And because they’re really good at it, they manage to get by entirely on private donations. All good stuff.

This is why it’s so disappointing to read about this ‘study’ financed by the RNLI by Cornwall college into the use of Homeopathic preparations in the treatment of Weeverfish stings.  Dr*T at Thinking is Dangerous has a great run-down of the issue for your perusal.  I’m not getting into the details of why homeopathy is bollocks because I’ve been up for just shy of 40 hours and the good doctor has it covered.  Summary: it is the magical belief that you can treat all things with what is quite literally water (or sugar pills).  It doesn’t work.

Here's the objects clause from the constitution of the RNLI:

THE OBJECTS OF THE INSTITUTION SHALL BE, FIRST, TO SAVE LIVES, PROMOTE SAFETY AND PROVIDE RELIEF FROM DISASTER AT SEA AND, SECONDLY, TO SAVE LIVES, PROMOTE SAFETY AND PROVIDE RELIEF FROM DISASTER ON INLAND WATERS ("THE OBJECTS").

Now there's no way that research into the efficacy of homeopathic treatment falls within the boundaries of their stated purpose, so it is almost certainly an unconstitutional use of their donor's contributions.  A couple of the science-blogger types have put in an FOI request so I’ll wait and see the length and breadth of the whole sorry waste of cash.

How very disappointing.

And another thing…

Further to my last post where I mention the bansturbators’ overall well-intentioned goal of doing Good Things by way of legislation; I have a quick point for the consideration of any common-good crusaders who may be passing through.

You do realise, Mr/Mrs Righteous, that no matter what your good intentions are, and no matter how nuanced and specific the perceived flaw you wish to fix is, the legislative or policy-based result of your attempted social engineering will always have a crude and ham-fisted result, don’t you?

Any new  policy you can come up with will be hammered –by committee- into a tick-box excel spreadsheet which can be rolled-out and universally enforced.   Which means that when you, for example, concoct and lobby for a new policy aimed at stopping neglectful parents from feeding their kids what is deemed to be a poor diet (outrageous strawman, but it’s what that Aussie nurse I previously mentioned was talking about ), it will inevitably be warped from what you think is a rational list of objective and achievable nutritional criteria, to social workers enforcing the de facto criminalisation of chips and cake.

With any attempt at centralised ideological dictatorship over nationwide regional services -as has become this feculent government’s forté- you remove all responsibility and perspective from those services…with predicable consequences.  But in my opinion the most important element that is lost by this kind of meddling by party diktat is that of  individual discretion. 

You name it: Police choosing to warn or disregard trivial offenders rather than arrest to make up the figures; Judges making the punishment fit the crime rather than a mandated fixed term;  Hospitals treating by professional judgement rather than by way of a new target; Allowing parents to bring their own children up rather than mind-wiping the kids by way of education policy; Social workers and associated agencies utilising common sense rather than ticking boxes……I could go on. 

And I could mention the more sweeping persecution of material vices like smoking, drugs and drinking, but my fellow bloggers have that covered pretty much daily.  So my only statement is that nothing has ever been solved by prohibition – if there ever was a problem outside of your cringing puritan mindset in the first place.

Take away message: Treat us like adults and we’ll behave like adults; the world will remain imperfect and you cannot hammer us into approximating your utopian ideal. You and your kind have fucked everything up that you have tried to fix or improve, please take this on board and evolve.

Oh –and I don’t think I can possibly overstate this last point-please, please, please fuck right off out of our lives, you pointless, handwringing cuntbubbles.

Saving us from ourselves

While in Oz, I was talking to a friend of a friend; a very nice lady nurse who worked in community health.  After a bit of idle career talk, she informed me of her wishes to move away from ‘reactive’ work and into more proactive, preventative stuff. I asked what she meant and she replied that she “wanted to get into legislation” and enthused about the success of things like legal seatbelt requirement in cars and the Aussie ban on smoking in cars with children.

I didn’t make much of it at the time, because: a) I was on holiday and desire an easy life, and b) It’s their country.  But, what anyone means when they wish to ‘get into’ legislation -or the influence thereof- is that they have a list of things they don’t like that they wish to see banned or modified-with-menaces.  The classic Righteous Bansturbator we’ve all come to know and love.

In personal experience -from life and the media- professions that have contact with the public and that are concerned with health and welfare are the most overt bansturbators. This is no real surprise.  They go about their working lives doing the best they can for people only to have their best efforts compromised by Joe Scum Public’s stubborn refusal to live their lives in the best proscribed manner.  Then, in order to rectify this flaw in the matrix, they conclude the best way to proceed is to constrain the freedoms of the unwashed for their own good.  And whilst we can imagine all manner of nefarious reasons for politicians to use this excuse to impose their will upon us; the rest of the usual mouthpieces for these curtailments can generally be assumed to have the best professional intentions at heart.

For example: When venting my ire at doctor friends about senior medical types feeding sound-bytes to the media about how alcohol prices should be raised prohibitively high in order to stop us harming ourselves, the response is “Well prevention is better than cure”.  My standard answer to such sentiment is “What the blue blithering fuck would you prefer me to die of?”

Which brings me rather neatly to this recent Beeb botheration covered rather splendidly by the Filthy Smoker over at the ‘Kitchen.

It is a sterling example of carbon-copy Righteous propaganda, complete with a frankly inspired image of a middle-class man patently struggling with his crippling addiction to the demon Pinot Noir: So universal is this scaremongering missive, that you could swap ‘drinking’ for ‘eating nice things’ or ‘smoking’ , and it would read like any other hectoring piece of pseudo-journalism we’ve come to expect from the state broadcaster.

The Filthy Smoker has beaten me to the next point I was going to make: How does increasingly living to an age where we need more healthcare and don’t pay taxes cost the NHS less?  It doesn’t. Us ending our sorry selves in a sozzled and flamboyant manner in late-middle years having contributed to the system all our working life is a financial best-case for the NHS.

Don’t worry though, the ‘leading centre-right think tank’ Policy Exchange (and therefore the incoming Tories) have a solution to this non-problem.

"Those admitted to hospital for less than 24 hours with acute alcohol intoxication should be charged the NHS tariff cost for their admission of £532.

What. The. Fuck?

Anyone who drinks alcohol in this benighted country already pays their ‘admission fee’ for this indulgence – several times over before they even pick up the damn bottle.  Do not presume to pass on the wastage and rampant unchecked expense of your clusterfuck of a health system to us just because we might make the ill-advised choice of utilising this service we have ‘till now financed.   Oh and this was a good bit:

"This amount would be reduced for those paying the costs of their own alcohol education and awareness course."

I frankly cannot think of a bigger ‘fuck-you’ than making someone pay for their own pointless,  health-nazi political re-education just so they can be fined anyway.  Just by a bit less.  Like a bit less sand in the Vaseline.

Let me wrap this up for you, fictional anthropomorphised NHS spectre reading this blog:  If you are going to tax us for the use of your universal and unavoidable “Envy of the World™” healthcare system, you do not get to decide the manner in which we live our lives in order to gain admittance.  If you don’t approve of our lifestyle choices, then by all means allow us to opt out, and I’ll have that discussion with my insurer, otherwise I too will echo TFS’s endorsement of the ‘Mash:

"Following a quick glance at my tax bill I've decided that the NHS will treat me and the government can keep its fucking opinions to itself."

Now Fuck Off.

On the flipside of the year

Right, this marks the end of my protracted seasonal sort-of hiatus and it’s back to business.

It’s all happening this year.  Maybe things will get better with our new clutch of troughers, maybe they won’t.  All the same, I hope all of you readers and fellow bloggers have a great time tonight, and the best possible new year.

Happy New Year guys.  I’ll see you at the barricades.