The Salted Slug

Things I did not know…..

2011-10-18T09:38:00.001+01:00

….that 48 people were killed in 1980 when a space-launch rocket exploded whilst being fuelled at Plesetsk in the then Soviet Union.
The rocket used hydrogen peroxide as fuel, and the method of fuel filter assembly had changed from using lead solder to tin-based solder.

Fuck you, RoHS directive!

Hydrogen peroxide can decompose in the presence of some catalysts. This reaction can be violent. Lead doesn’t do it. Tin does.

So not only does it cause your Xbox to die and need the tea-towel treatment, it may blow you up also.

knew there was a reason why, in my computer-fixing workshop days, we used to use leaded solder as a kind of illicit prison-cigarettes currency.

Lead-free is the devil.

The Nothing

2011-10-13T14:17:00.001+01:00

*Sent by phone so no apologies for looking like a cobbler's thumb*

It has been interesting watching the decline in productivity among the libertarian/rightwing-ish blogging community, and indeed there has been much gazing of navels subsequent to May of last year, and this post is no different.

My contributions were ebbing anyway as it was hard to maintain the repetitive commentary on the same old irritations or form an opinion which had enough momentum to carry itself to the keyboard.

There was also the simultaneous issue of me quitting the public sector job to join the rest of you serfs as well, mind. Found I had less time or unused intellectual stamina after making that particular transition. Odd, that.

There is also the issue that its particularly tricky to resuscitate the blogging gland once its atrophied from disuse; you end up fabricating some sort of egocentric expectation on behalf of the imaginary masses waiting for your proclamation (and those Chinese ad-spammers can be such a tough audience), and that just gets worse the longer you leave it.

The likes of Twitter really aren’t the friend of the blog, either. Any original thought/idea/insult you manage to muster among the shrieking hoards gets smashed into 140 characters and proliferated in real-time to the 3 people on your timeline who are up at 4am. This has the habit of attenuating any enthusiasm you would've had toward documenting for posterity because by the time you fire-up the blog its already old-hat.

Oh and there's always some bastard whose plagiarised the idea right out of your head before you've had a chance to voice it. Snowolf has been a right pain on this front over the past 18 months. If you’re unfamiliar with his blog, start reading from round about the election and read ‘till now and you’ve probably got a fairly representative idea of my stance on things. He is a perpetual cockblocker between me and my muse.

And politically...Jesus. I think I’m a just bit stunned by the frankly impressive way in which this government has managed to be so vilified while achieving so very little. It generally falls to the Tories to come to the rescue (after a Labour government has finished outraging an economy in every orifice), solve some issues by way of doing unpopular things, and then be kicked out in time for the next phalanx of red rosettes to roll back in, loins girded for more.

What we have instead is the EU-harmonised, ISO-standard, QA-tested, stamped and approved gangfuck of social-democractic uselessness that we we’ve grown so fond of over the past decade. At least when we used to be run by chinless braying inbreds, they were at least vaguely competent.

I’m guessing you’ll be hearing more from me on this, but my lunchbreak is over.

There’s taxes to pay, doncha know.

Atomkraft? Ja Bitte!

2011-10-12T23:58:00.001+01:00

This would be the disaster where –to the best of my knowledge- no one has been killed, hurt, maimed or otherwise offended. An event in stark contrast to the shitload of water and tectonic activity down the road. If I was one of the tens of thousands of victims of the real disaster, I’d be well hacked off by now.

Anyway, I see that HMG’s Chief Inspector of Nuclear Shit has said what everyone knows: that the UK nuclear industry's quest for safety long ago reached the point where we'd fed ourselves up our own arse that we now look at the world through our own eyes through our own eyes.
And thus safety is assured.

I am vaguely amused that all of the operators of nuclear sites had already evaluated tsunami hazard in the '70s.

Oh, and Sellafield has also considered meteorite impact.

And considered if an earthquake could move the river.

No, by the way.

Just build the fucking things already. Jesus.

Monbiot in being-sane shocker

2011-03-22T12:24:00.001Z

My perception of reality was somewhat shaken today by an article by George Monbiot which I would struggle to disagree with:

Some greens have wildly exaggerated the dangers of radioactive pollution. For a clearer view, look at the graphic published by xkcd.com. It shows that the average total dose from the Three Mile Island disaster for someone living within 10 miles of the plant was one 625th of the maximum yearly amount permitted for US radiation workers. This, in turn, is half of the lowest one-year dose clearly linked to an increased cancer risk, which, in its turn, is one 80th of an invariably fatal exposure. I'm not proposing complacency here. I am proposing perspective.
If other forms of energy production caused no damage, these impacts would weigh more heavily. But energy is like medicine: if there are no side-effects, the chances are that it doesn't work.

Indeed, not only is it a rather rational analysis of the Fukushima situation
(although the email consensus here at Slug towers would disagree on the 'poor design' bit; some parts are sub-optimal but unless you’re psychic you only find out from trying it. We’d say the plants were just old. And the Japanese are not noted for cutting corners to save a few Yen; you only have to look at the place and interact with their nuclear industry to see that. But I digress)
but also a rather robust sandbagging of the oft-suggested green candidates for alternative energy production. The article is really rather brilliant.

He better get back to normal soon, or my world may well come off it’s axis.

Because I have to link to such genius

2011-03-22T12:12:00.001Z

(Click for biggerer)

I don’t know how he does it. XKCD

Dave comments…

2011-03-22T11:40:00.001Z

“4.4%? And that's CPI? Christ.

I reckon you're actually living in Buenos Aries or Weimar Germany. If you hear either people banging pots and pans or see boiled crow on a restaurant menu, you'll know which it is.”

Yes, thanks for that. I’m sure he’ll be first to tell me how fucked I am when I’m fighting stray dogs for first dibs on roadkill.

It can be done

2011-03-21T12:07:00.001Z

This the Joban line in the Hitachi-Naka city area of Japan:

By anyone’s conservative assessment of the situation: that is buggered. Estimated time to repair?

6 weeks.

Far be it to from me to speculate how many months that’d take over here…

Still more informative than the BBC

2011-03-17T15:51:00.001Z

But still…

That’s that cleared up for you.

Rational response…or the other thing

2011-03-16T16:16:00.001Z

You don’t have a resource like M.M.Dave© on standby and not use him to educate the unwashed.
So I asked, “Dave, what the blistering blue fuck is this?”:

“This is the rarely seen 'nuclear safety concern based on arbitrary value of a randomly selected parameter'. Haven't seen this move for years.

They've gone for age, and picked 31. Not 32, not 30. 31's when safe ends.

So to logic; you think the calculation of earthquake forces is wrong - shut down all. You think the calculation of flooding, or the vulnerability to common cause failure in flooding is wrong - shut down the ones on the coast. You're worried about that specific design - shut those down.

But no. This has the special feature of causing lots of economic damage whilst fundamentally failing to address any legitimate safety concerns.

10/10”

FYI, Doom Merchants

2011-03-16T14:48:00.001Z

You see, I was thinking this wouldn't be Japan if the data wasn't available in a progress tracking table:

http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/news_images/pdf/ENGNEWS01_1300273535P.pdf

Updated 3/4 times a day.

Hard to tell the difference

2011-03-16T10:25:00.001Z

A hoax? It reads more like a pre-emptive headline draft to me.

Apparently the Emperor is concerned, also. I honestly didn’t know they still had one. I suppose this changes everything. I was going to stick to listening to the blokes that do this for a living, or indeed, just take dictation from Dave.

But if an aging monarch says he’s worried, well, I’m off to stock up on iodine and paint my windows black.

The Beast

2011-03-16T01:34:00.001Z

This has gone ‘round the world twice by now, but I couldn’t let it pass without comment.

You often can often find Youtube clips of kids being dreadful to each other, such is the nature of the day. Further, you quite often see would-be bullies, who’ve organised a friend to video their victim’s torment, biting off more than they can chew and getting a good hiding.

What you don’t often see is instant justice quite as satisfying as this:

However yon scrote thought his day would turn out; I don’t think it featured those events.

The big guy got suspended, and I can kind of see why the school would pretty much have to do that; what with the overt pondlife smashing and all.
But no matter, he can kick back for a couple of days and go back to school knowing that his days of torment (and they were numerous, apparently) are over.

Obviously there has been much cheering and frowning on the intertubes, as best commentated here by Popehat. Needless to say, the reaction from some quarters is all so very predictable:

[P]olice and bullying experts are concerned by the video’s publication on Facebook and the overwhelmingly positive reaction to the older boy’s retaliation against his attacker.
“We don’t believe that violence is ever the answer,” [seasoned bullying expert John] Dalgleish says. “We believe there are other ways that children can manage this.” …
“The longer term way is about developing better relationships between kids in the school, that will then empower young people to not be passive bystanders when these acts occur but to stand up and say ‘this is wrong’,” Mr Dalgleish says.
“The short term solution is to have individual counselling with each of the children.”

Yeah you could do that. Or you could feed the fucker into the pavement and teach him a valuable life lesson while practically guaranteeing yourself increased social standing and self-respect. Or at least eternal recognition in the hallowed halls of ED, and be immortalised as a /b/ meme for at least 3 months.

Sometimes violence really is the answer.*

*Caveat: Might help if you are several times the size of your assailant who very obviously has shit for brains, as in this example

Get A Grip

2011-03-15T19:29:00.001Z

You see that? Fuck all.

To read the gleefully apocalyptic commentary from the MSM on the recent unpleasantness over at the Japanese nuclear sites, you would think that it was the end of days; time to stock up on canned food and shotguns.
I’m pretty sure the Beeb won’t be happy unless someone produces multi-headed babies and Godzilla is awoken.

So I put it to this blog’s long-suffering muse/plagiarisee My Mate Dave, who if you haven't figured by now has a bit of an atomic bent, and with whom I watched the events unfold while thoroughly and irresponsibly obliviated in a bar in Vienna:

“Are the Japs actually boned or should I swim across there and declare myself king of Fukushima?”

And he spoke thus:

“Nah, media get more hysterical the further away from disaster things get.

They're now going on about how "spent fuel pools are exposed to the open air". What, like four at Sellafield have been since the first was finished in 1951? It's a swimming pool. A roof is a good idea, but the water is what makes it work. I'm not claiming this is a good engineering solution (the less said about B30 the better, for any man's sanity), but a disaster-free 60 years suggests they may make the end of the week.

The hmm, explosion or whatever at unit 2 seems to have failed in some respect the pressure suppression pool, which is a big toroidal vessel around bottom of plant. The steam in this thus guffed out and gave that high 400mSv reading (which was measured on the power station site).

The Japanese PM on TV said this is a level which is potentially harmful to health, which it is, but the BBC are now reporting "radiation levels harmful to health" without adding the qualification "if you were actually inside the power station, standing next to the leaking part spewing radioactive gas, when this measurement was taken, and had stayed there, and the radiation level had stayed the same, which it didn't because now it's a thousand times lower".

They're gettin' cooling. Decay is working it's inevitable magic, so the cooling situation improves. They're worried about the spent fuel pools, as they also require cooling (but emit much less power and are less densely arranged), but I'm guessing they may have lost some water due to sloshing in the incident, and well, it's been 5 days nearly. For the guys that managed cooling the reactor for a day job, this is a trivial task. I assume they're trying not to seawater them, but it's an option if a good plan doesn't work.

I reckon this will end with no dose to members of the public above that allowed (which is the situation now, not that you'd guess from watching the news), and the operators ending up with some guys above their annual allowance as well as the guy killed in the actual earthquake. Logically everyone in media and German politics (seriously, what the hell is this shit?) would end up feeling really quite stupid about the fuss they'd made in a couple of weeks time. But they won't.

Get swimming. I did know a good hotel there, but.....”

So be told, hand-ringers. Nothing to see here, move along.

Belgium

2011-03-04T14:14:00.001Z

It occurred to me -while idly browsing random toss on Twitter- that Belgium has no government and hasn’t had a government in quite a while.
They seem to be coping.
Unthinkable.

Alas the concern is that business as usual might not be enough. They've a debt/GDP ratio of about 100%, and are getting an increasing bond spread with respect to German bonds. And while cutting spending is the way forward, it is a political decision that they have no one to make...

Obviously if everything money was spent on was self evidently necessary there would be no decision that needed making. And probably no debt crisis.

M.M.Dave suggests that maybe what they need is something like Texas; the state legislature meets in January, in odd-numbered years only.

Just a thought.

(And they have the same dramas we do with the public sector on an entitlement bender, but what can you do? Well, you can sack them all, but this needs someone to do the sacking. Right before setting their charges and leaving the building, obv.)

NHS Fail

2011-02-25T10:41:00.001Z

A colleague just told me of his recent travails with our illustrious health system. It is brilliant (from a pub anecdote point of view at least).

Apparently a couple of months ago he ended up with an inch-long wood splinter stuck deep in his arm while moving a wardrobe. At the time he went in the local NHS walk-in centre, where they were unable to extract said splinter with the means at their disposal. He was then referred to the local A&E where they anaesthetised his arm, made an incision and went at it with the tweezers. Still no joy.

So they made an appointment with the local orthopaedics department for a couple of weeks later. Appointment comes, he is told that they just do bones and that what he needs is an appointment with Excisions (which I think means somewhere within Dermatology).
An appointment with whoever is made for another couple of weeks time

So he finds himself this morning -with a splinter which is completely healed over and now several millimetres under his skin- phoning the admin number to see about the scheduling of his morning appointment and what time he can expect to get back to work afterwards. He is told:

“Oh you won’t be able to go back to work after a vasectomy”

Yes, really. They’d booked him in for the Snip.

Envy of the world, it is.

What are the RAF for?

2011-02-23T17:34:00.001Z

Over at The CatCounters, NickM remarked on the rather sad image of a ~~MR2~~ (MRA4, even) Nimrod being scrapped before it was even deployed:

As we( me and Dave; mainly Dave) have mentioned before, the project was a farce, but when you've paid to the point where there's a product, you might as well use it. Or at least keep the option of using it.
Unlike the MoD, we do understand sunk cost as a concept, but.....
What we hadn't noticed was they'd put the Sentinel aircraft on the chop list also (for after we pull out of Afghanistan).
These are the ground scanning radar that gives ground commanders a God's eye view (through cloud, the dark etc.). I appreciate that the drones we have are much cheaper that these planes, but these things can do it from a 100 miles away, so they can be used against militaries with decent air defence.

If you have a small Army (we do) this is exactly the sort of thing you would need so it can punch above its weight. And this isn't a prospective project; the aircraft are in service.
Is it just me, or have the Air Force just given up the stuff they do in order to support the Army/Navy so they can keep lots of stuff we don't need?

Heidi

2011-02-23T17:17:00.001Z

WHAT
THE
FUCK?

The title itself sent me into bemused hysterics.

There's a clairvoyant wok-eyed possum in the fucking Telegraph?

Christ.

It's the end times.

In other news, did you know that Tyco Brahe had a clairvoyant dwarf who sat under his desk whilst he was working? Apparently it didn't quite work without the dwarf.

Brahe anecdote c/o my mate Dave.

Fun with Vulture Spies

2011-01-08T00:01:00.001Z

The fine folks of Hartlepool have nothing on these clowns.

Saudi Arabian officials have "detained" a vulture on accusations of being a spy for Israel, media reports say.

Fucking Zionists are everywhere. It gets better though:

In December, the governor of Egypt's South Sinai province, Mohamed Abdul Fadil Shousha, suggested the spy agency may have had a hand in a string of deadly shark attacks off the coast of the Sharm el-Sheikh resort.
He said it was "not out of the question" that Mossad had put the killer shark in the area.

Yes, obvious know that you mention it.

All very amusing, but the related email discussion with some chums was more so.
I’ve introduced My Mate Dave before, so here he is again with My Mate Tom:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MMTOM -
Well, shit. I'm glad you brought this up as I'd almost forgotten. A
colleague of mine (he of the "I don't want the wifi router shooting
radiation into my head") saw this article last night and offered some of
his much valued wisdom on the subject of the Mossad-instigated
shark-attack, thus:
"Yeah, like, 'cause they could easily do that. I
mean, like, they have satellites that can get a picture of a packet of
fags, so they could just laser down some microwaves at sharks when they
surface and control them."

I'll leave you to savour that sentence for a moment. In case you were
wondering, he was being serious, yes.

MMDAVE-
It has taken me until now to absorb the majesty of that particular
reckon. The part after the last comma has the rare attribute of making
sense with respect to syntax and no other frame of reference known to
terrestrial intelligence. The smooth leap from the widely suspected
capability of modern military optical imaging satellites to observe
cigarette packet sized objects to thought control of fish is most
noteworthy.

In other news, I was reading about a guy that flew fighters for BAE in
demo flights at air shows. He recalls the first time MiG came to
Farnborough. In their hospitality suite they had "de-icing alcohol from
the jet fighters served up in a watering can and accompanied
incongruously with the most delicious chocolates you've ever tasted -
absolutely true".

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Awesome.

After a few half-hearted false starts last year, I shall see if blogging can be jump-started now that Our Collation Overlords have had a chance to prove themselves equal to their unfailing ability to annoy me.

Oh, and Happy New Year.

Buying the Government

2010-11-29T09:22:00.000Z

Got stuff stacked up to blog about, but you can wait.
For the time being though, what the blue blazing fuck is going on here?

I am left rubbing my eyes.

Did a not-obviously-insane member of the government — a corporate troubleshooter and Conservative life peer — really just stand up in the House of Lords and announce that a shadowy Foundation (that might or might not represent the Vatican) was offering the British government an investment of umpty-billion pounds in order to reboot the economy — free, gratis, with no strings attached?

Or am I just imagining the "no strings attached" clause?

Not one for conspiracy theories me, but this is all in Hansard and does contain weapons-grade WTF?

Any of you Common Purpose lizard people care to shed some light?

Defence of the Belm

2010-11-01T22:15:00.001Z

Ho hum. Standard blogging prologue about being busy. Although it would seem that everyone is being culled by the sheer scale of the Coalition's mediocrity , I don't officially count myself among those who've buggered off. I’m just really, really lazy. Also, having found myself back in the real world of downtrodden taxpayers, I’m disinclined to attempt to think after a day of being awesome.

Enough talk. I’m still here and I’ve been talking to My Mate Dave again. What we’re going to address today is our new and improved, non-Labour afflicted Government’s ability to take an admittedly inherited bad situation (Defence procurement), and then fuck it flamboyantly into the ground. Truly, it has been a modern marvel to observe. And so, following in DK’s footsteps in pointing out the apparent idiocy of our blue and yellow overlords, take a gander at this shower of shit:

NAVY

So, to save money they're getting rid of the carrier HMS Ark Royal and retiring all of the Harriers. This actually probably won't make much difference to anything. The 9 or so Harriers it can carry don't represent a particularly worrying strike force, and being RAF Harriers (designed for close air support of ground forces) they lack some things considered vital for air defence fighters. Like radar.
The Sea Harriers they deployed to the Falklands were more capable fighter aircraft than the GR7s/GR9s they been using recently. The Navy last had proper fighter aircraft in the 90's when the Sea Harrier FRS2 were axed in a previous round of defence cuts. They had beyond-visual-range radar-guided missiles and everything.

Next up, one of HMS Illustrious or HMS Ocean are for the chop. These have been in use as commando carrying ships (landing said commandos with helicopters), which would be useful for the sort of intervention mission stuff that was dead trendy a few years ago. Now, HMS Illustrious is over 25 years old and was designed as a aircraft carrier. HMS Ocean is 10 years old and was designed for this mission. In addition to having been purpose designed to carry a battalion of troops rather than having to jam them in, it has the capability to land stuff using landing craft from an internal dock and has interior vehicle decks for trucks, APCs, whatever. It was also built by a commercial shipyard and uses a commercial diesel drive. In consequence it's really cheap to run. HMS Illustrious (which is the same class of vessel as HMS Ark Royal) uses four of the engines off Concorde to crank out 95,000hp. This is cool, but alas as cheap to run as it sounds. That there would even be a choice to make over which one to retire is bizarre. One is better and cheaper and a lot newer than the other.

One of the 4 Bay Class support ships for landing forces is going also. I suppose if you have less landing forces they need less support. I mention this only to highlight the waste as all of these ships are new.

The remaining Type 42s (ancient) will be replaced by Type 45s as planned. The Type 45 is designed for escorting aircraft carriers, which we won't have between next year and 2020, making them kind of pointless. To save money they have no armament other than their anti-aircraft missile, a 4.5'' gun and a pair of 20mm cannons. No anti-ship missile, no torpedo tubes. When they were escorting a carrier they wouldn't need this; its aircraft would provide all the anti-shipping firepower needed, and it's helicopters would assist escorting frigates for anti-submarine work.
But now we have 6 ships that would need escorting themselves to go anywhere near harms way. Genius.

Ohh, and despite the noise made about how effective its anti-aircraft missiles against the new high-speed anti-ship missile and potential anti-ballistic missile uses, it's never even been tested against a supersonic target, let alone a ballistic missile.

The two new aircraft carriers they're still going to build, but deliver the first one straight to store. The second one will be fitted for catapult launch and barrier recovery. This is a sound idea as it greatly increases the range of available aircraft and will allow US and French aircraft to land on it. The carrier will have an air wing of 12 new F35Cs, to kick around the space designed for 40 of them. With careful parking of these 12, the hanger will now be usable as an indoor footie pitch, so it isn't all bad. The first one will either be kept so they can be swapped over for refits etc, or sold. This runs up against the idea that having one is about as much use as zero, as you can never plan on it being available. The French have this problem at the moment with their single carrier, and with a decent discount might take the one we can't afford any more off our hands.

AIR FORCE

On Air Force matters, the Nimrod MRA4 will be abandoned. This should have happened about 10 years ago, but with timing only the government could pull off they've cancelled after the contract has already been paid in full. BAe will complete the aircraft and deliver them to the MoD who will store or scrap them.

They've each cost more than a space shuttle (honestly), and we won't use them to save on the cost of jet fuel. Part of the rationale to keep 13 Navy frigates is to keep control of sea lanes, protect trade etc. This clearly doesn't apply in the case of an asset, unlike the frigates, actually potentially useful to this role. The existing aircraft are already being phased out, so maritime patrol is a capability we're simply abandoning. All gone.

Just this week a fishing factory ship from the Faroe Isles caught fire about 250 miles SW of the Scilly Isles. The French scrambled one of their patrol aircraft to co-ordinate the rescue and act as a comms link (life-rafts don't tend to have HF radios, so you're line of sight or screwed). If they'd been the same distance off Northern Ireland we could not provide the same service. With respect to achieving the same thing with satellites as has been suggested, we don't have any recce satellites and ships are a right pain to spot anyway, even when there's no cloud.

There will be fewer air-to-air fighters and Tornado bombers, which seems pretty sensible. Hard put to work out what we'd want them for. We're still buying the Airbus military transport instead of cheaper and much better C-17s like we already operate. Obviously.

ARMY

The army is being trimmed slightly, mostly with respect to the heavy army (tanks and really big guns). This is probably pretty sensible; Tanks still have uses but the massive armoured engagements the current lot were built for may well be a thing of the past. Shame that this is being seen as a chance to cut 5000 guys and save a few quid rather than freeing up 5000 trained men to re-enforce the much stretched infantry.

The order the last government announced for 22 new Chinooks helicopters for Afghanistan (which are operated by the Air Force, but for the use of the Army) has been cut to 12, despite there being 'no cuts to the frontline in Afghanistan'.

NUKES

And lastly the nuclear deterrent. We're still having one, but fewer warheads and rockets. Minimum deterrence is the plan, and it must be said the current class of SSBNs has its history more in the cold war kill-everything-twice logic. So this works for me. The plan to save money by waiting 5 years with thumbs firmly inserted and keep the current boats going looks pretty dumb though. Industry has experience with keeping submarines in service beyond their design life, and it's an experience mostly involving swearing, spending lots and lots of the MoDs money, and still having the thing tied to a sea wall. I will be amazed if this doesn't cost us more in the long run, and not at all surprised if 'continuous at sea deterrence' breaks down as all 4 boats are out of service.

Spam Cameron made noises about reviewing this in 2015 and making everything okay when we're less broke, I only hope the stuff the MoD is putting in store or laying up they actually do, rather than their normal practice of leaving things to rot. We sold 3 type 23 frigates to the Chilean Navy a few years ago. They were each only about 10 years old when a previous round of defence cuts laid them up. They been laid up about 2 years when the MoD sold them. The Chileans wisely had the sale contract stipulate they be sea-worthy. Having signed this, the MoD checked the ships and found they were soundly not. The MoD then spent more than the Chileans paid to make them sea-worthy.

Sigh.

All in all, it’s hard to see what ‘role’ our armed forces are being tailored for. Be it defence of the home shores or helping the Septics impose their will on the dustier bits of the globe; the armed forces are being hamstrung in the name of political expediency and defence industry protectionism.
This is nothing new, but normally we leave the squaddie-hacking to Labour and the re-funding to the Tories. Looks like this batch of blues may’ve broken that particular cycle.

In principle, I don’t really have a problem with a reduced armed forces, so long as there is a commensurate reduction in their role and the requirement placed upon them. Aside from our very 19th century sojourn in the south Atlantic, most of our modern military engagements have been at the behest of the Americans and have been of dubious national interest.

So it’s a case of what the objective here is: If we want to protect the home turf – fine, lets focus on that and equip accordingly; If we’re going to continue to posture and swing our dicks on the world stage for whatever fucking contrived reason: we’re going to need the help of more than two blokes and a Landrover,

Oh and will someone please sort out the MoD’s procurement systems? The institution is demented to a scale best described as ‘Lovecraftian’.

The Pope

2010-09-17T00:20:00.001+01:00

I thought that at some point today I would blog about something, and the Pope seemed to nominate himself as a convenient piece of ill-tasting, low-hanging fruit. Thing is, even though I have several issues with religion in general, and the behaviour of the Roman Catholic church specifically (vaguely ironically, I am Catholic because I had the watery induction as an infant, and the first rule of Club RatCatcher is you don’t get to leave, you can only be thrown out), I don’t think I could ever articulate my feelings more succinctly than Tim Minchin does in this little ditty:

Lovely.

Now disappear back to your bastion of perpetual human infancy; you pompous remnant of a barbaric age. .

Off you go, then

2010-09-14T00:13:00.001+01:00

Even before I was emancipated from the shackles of public parasitism, my response to this would be exactly the same:

And that response would be: It doesn’t matter how good you are (or you think you are), how brilliant our supposed public services are in your juvenile, collectivist mindset; There is no money. There is less than no money. In fact the sheer scale of the money we do not have is hilarious. Further, the rate at which we are still losing money is fucking deranged.
This means that those on the public payroll face two prospects:
Earn less in some manner, or, become fewer in number. Or both. Or burn your office down and decide make a living creating dungeon porn. It’s a seller’s market.*

Hey, don’t look at me –blame the incompetent revenue pissers who you put in power for 11 years. If they hadn’t inflated your numbers to roughly that of Beijing, we wouldn't have (as much of) a problem now, would we?

And a ‘more brutish society’? Exactly which of you fuckers are keeping the barbarians from the gates? Whoever you are, I admire your near-perfect stealth behind what would appear to be an ingenious cover of barely-functional bureaucracy and petty fascism. Well done, oh arbiters of social progress and guardians of our harmonious and prosperous way of life.

Ah fuck it, go ahead and strike and show us how important you are not.

Go and read Snowolf’s take on this, and read the rest of his blog while you’re there; ‘tis good shit.

*I’ve possibly been listening to too much Stanhope.

Back in the saddle

2010-09-13T20:43:00.001+01:00

Right, so after taking a stab at unemployment for a whole week, I decided it wasn’t for me. So today I started a new role doing some proper engineering up North in a proper private sector job. It was gritty. Yeah the holiday, conditions and pension aren’t a patch on the publicly-funded paradise that was my previous role, but damn it, it’s worth it so I can hold the moral high ground with strangers on the internet when pontificating about government spending. And that, as we all know, is the noblest of all endeavours.

That said, I hope the old place survives the apparently inevitable twatting from Cable et al in the coming months, but it’s on the cards that ISIS or Diamond will be shitcanned for the short-term. True, closing either isn’t going kill any grannies or close any orphanages, but at least they’re taking their 60-70 mill and doing something cool. Hmm, I hope their sales pitch to the treasury is better than mine.

Anyhow, since anxiety is no longer my constant companion: blogging will resume……now.

Placeholder of dubious sanity

2010-09-01T13:21:00.001+01:00

As I’m the process of removing myself from the public payroll (in fact I will be self-inflictedly unemployed by the end of Friday), I’ve been stacking up interviews at a swift rate. Consequently, my attention has waned from all things blog until I have the first clue what direction my life is headed.
In the meantime I’ll share some madness with you.

In case you don't know of it, via cracked, check this out:

http://www.cpedia.com/wiki/Cats_and_Kittens

Cpedia is a bot-generated online encyclopaedia which makes even less sense than the wiki.

I marvel that they continue to pay the power bill for the servers this runs on, unless the nihilism is part of the plan.

As you were.

(H/T MMDave)

Taking that nuclear option

2010-08-10T01:50:00.001+01:00

A couple of months ago, My Mate Dave and I wrote a piece on the possible future role of nuclear power in the UK (indeed, everywhere) and how we think it’s a winner. The main obstacle we could see was the supposedly vehemently anti-nuclear Lib-Dem contingent within the then newly-formed coalition popping up to scupper proceedings. As it turns out, when you actually have to do something other than heckle from the sidelines, it has a habit of reforming your perspective:

Then:

The Liberal Democrat Cabinet minister was a vociferous opponent of nuclear before he joined the Government.
He wrote three years ago: “Nuclear is a tried, tested and failed technology. New nuclear would be economically foolhardy, environmentally irresponsible, and pose long-term security questions that are impossible to address.

Now:

He told BBC Radio Four's Today programme today that his views in the past on nuclear energy had been “much misunderstood”.
He had merely pointed out that there had been no private investment in nuclear since the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in America in 1979.
He said: “There will be investment in new nuclear and that will be an important part of our energy mix - along, of course, with coal and gas, as long as there is carbon capture and storage, and along with renewables.”

Hey, I don’t mind a bloke changing his mind once he’s in a position to see the greater picture - that’s what rational people do when presented with facts contrary to previously held opinions. My approval is obviously helped along by the fact that he’s now espousing opinions broadly in-line to my own on the matter, but hey ho. Apparently though, in politics, this kind of reversal isn’t logic but ‘flip-flopping’. Such is the hazard of coasting to power while married to frivolously ideological positions rather than rationally reasoned ones. But bollocks, he’s making the right noises so I don’t care.

As an aside I will briefly comment on the Three Mile Island thing. I’ve never understood why that was ever used as an example of the inherent riskiness of nuclear power despite showing that even when you fuck up every single thing when running a nuke station, you can’t even harm or kill a single person. If there was ever an example of how safe your modern station was -and how you wouldn’t get another Chernobyl-like event, thank you very much, mainstream media- this was it. But that, along with the release of the likes of The China Syndrome (!), literally destroyed the American nuclear industry, so they made do with dioxin poisoning from fossil-fuel burning plants instead.

But like me and any other vaguely interested observer will point out: in any given mainstream discussion on power generation, the rationality is always inversely proportional to the mentions of the atom smashing. In the end, pragmatism wins out.

Doing my bit for the deficit

2010-08-09T16:52:00.001+01:00

It’s been a quiet few months on this blog. I keep saying –to myself more than anyone else- that I’ll get on with it, especially as the post-election period has been vaguely interesting, but life keeps taking the wind out of my sails such that I’ve not really been spending any time on the filthy intertubes at all.
This is mostly down to the real-life drama at the heart of my stupor, and the blog is somewhat to blame for some unpleasantness that I’ve been dealing with of late. This is all in the process of being dealt with, but big changes are afoot at Chez Slug.

The biggest deal is that I’ve handed in my notice at work and similarly given notice for the flat. Don’t get me wrong, I like the place and all that, and my colleagues and line management have been top-notch……but for several reasons it’s time to move on, if only to give my career the kick up the arse it needs. So I have removed myself as a burden on your taxes and am entertaining some proper private-sector positions of interest elsewhere in the country.
Exactly where and what I end up doing will remain a better kept secret than with my present occupation, as you really don’t appreciate the anonymity until it’s gone.

So, ‘tis a time of nervousness, uncertainty and excitement but, as a wiser chap in real-life told me recently:

“It’ll be alright in a bit”.

Hope so.

As for you lot; your irregular service will resume shortly

Boom

2010-07-16T22:04:00.001+01:00

While I’m being a drama queen, here’s something else via My Mate Dave:

http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/05/14/how_not_to_do_it_acetylene_cylinders.php

A note for Pedant's Corner: Not actually gas cylinders acetylene; they contain some sort of porous material and are filled with acetone that has acetylene dissolved in it. This is because acetylene can't be stored as a pressurised gas above about 2 bar or it explodes. Needless to say, when it goes wrong the acetone isn't going to make the day more fun.

This combination of two already pretty hazardous things reminds me of Astrolite, which is neither a lightweight synthetic pitch or a low calorie lubricant, but an explosive. Now, ammonium nitrate and fuel oil is a very common mining explosive. Ammonium nitrate is produced in huge quantities for fertilizer, and so is really cheap, and pretty safe. Mix it with diesel and you can pore it straight into drilled holes. Less bang than dynamite but it's virtually free and you can always just use more. However someone looked at this and thought; "Fuel oil, hmm. What about rocket fuel?" And so Astrolite, ammonium nitrate dissolved in hydrazine, came about. This of course adds extreme toxicity to the hazard posed by your explosives and makes it extremely powerful. Remarkably, this stuff came out in the '60s and has only just gone away...

Some Drive-by Weirdness

2010-07-14T19:53:00.001+01:00

Now, you may have to take my word for it, but this is an actual news website. They employ 150 people to provide Manga style news....

Here is an example story about North Korea:

Brilliant.

In other news, the International Committee on Weights and Measures has agreed to consider adopting 'Hella' as the prefix for 10^27.
Honestly.

A brief point on traffic

2010-07-07T00:26:00.001+01:00

I’ve been checked right out of the internet while some intensely distracting real-life drama is resolved one way or the other. It’s rather liberating in an “I have not the slightest clue what is going on about anything” kind of way. The wife had to tell me why everyone was looking for that moody-looking moon-faced bloke whose all over the news.

Anyway, this post comes once again as a result of discussions with My Mate Dave (who I’m the de facto mouthpiece for until I have any ideas of my own and life gets off my case. Seriously, ask Al Jahom – I’m a total IRL drag at the moment). Roll Dave:

Pointless fact: In 1930 the speed limit everywhere in Britain was 20mph. In that year the Road Traffic Act of 1930 abolished all speed limits. The reason for this was was explained by ex-Lord Chancellor Lord Buckmaster as: "the existing speed limit was so universally disobeyed that its maintenance brought the law into contempt".
The logic holds true today. I'm generally law abiding, except with respect to traffic regulation. It started with the speed limit and has evolved into a more general contempt. As an Italian guy said on TV once: "if there was a crossing with a red light, but nobody was crossing, wouldn't it be incredibly stupid to stop?".
The 70mph limit can't be all that important to road safety because everyone ignores it and we have the safest roads in Europe.

Well, quite. I’m –somewhat tangentially- minded of this article in Wired from a few years back which mentioned the Dutch town Drachten, which did away with road markings, warning signs and traffic lights and saw it’s accident rate plummet to nothing:

Monderman and I stand in silence by the side of the road a few minutes, watching the stream of motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians make their way through the circle, a giant concrete mixing bowl of transport. Somehow it all works. The drivers slow to gauge the intentions of crossing bicyclists and walkers. Negotiations over right-of-way are made through fleeting eye contact. Remarkably, traffic moves smoothly around the circle with hardly a brake screeching, horn honking, or obscene gesture. "I love it!" Monderman says at last. "Pedestrians and cyclists used to avoid this place, but now, as you see, the cars look out for the cyclists, the cyclists look out for the pedestrians, and everyone looks out for each other. You can't expect traffic signs and street markings to encourage that sort of behavior. You have to build it into the design of the road."

Sounds like a plan. Build the road so as to encourage driver/user awareness of themselves and others, maintain the burden of personal responsibility, and hopefully self-preservation will make people into better drivers. Makes sense to me at least. Either that or 20mph speed limits everywhere and somehow even more cameras, I mean finding some uncovered inches of public space in which to plant more surveillance is always a giggle.
To be fair, at least the DfT told that minister to get tae fook on the speed limit front, but still…FFS.

Spotted Owls

2010-06-28T12:21:00.001+01:00

There is a long running environmental issue in Northern California concerning the logging industry. There are many restrictions on their operations due to them working in the habitat of the endangered spotted owl. This doesn't sit well with the local timber and paper business, who have produced some propaganda bordering on genius:

Also available as a bumper sticker, naturally.

Thirty

2010-06-27T15:56:00.000+01:00

This started out as a post on Friday, mourning the passing of my twenties. However, events in real life came along and took the wind out of my sails before I had a chance to hit ‘submit’. And if I wasn’t feeling all introspective anyway with regards to life, career and everything, I’ve even more cause now.
As the curse says: I’m living in interesting times.

Anyway, my original post was going to point out that, all things considered, I’m not that bothered about getting older. This is mainly because I envy the youngest generations less and less with each passing year. As AJ remarks, we have several generations of kids/young adults utterly failed by the education system, to the point of being functionally unemployable. I left secondary school on the cusp of Labour taking control and don’t feel that hard done by, but kids these days…..Jesus. Browsing the discussion boards of Facebook is an exercise in utter exasperation. So like Al, I too hold no fear from younger competitors on the jobs market, which might prove for the best depending on how things turn out.

But enough of this mawdling bollocks, I’m actually watching the England game and am sharpening my pitchfork like everyone else after THAT decision.
I mean, ref-er-ee….

Update: Scratch that, reckon there’s another target for the England fans’ collective ire. I mean really, what was that?

NICE Mission Creep

2010-06-22T13:14:00.001+01:00

In the States, on the back of some high-profile class action lawsuits filed against major food producers back in 2003, the fast food restaurant chains ended up pledging to switch to cooking oils free of trans-fats. It seems now that NICE –as part of our societies’ ceaseless quest to meddle with other people’s lives in every single way imaginable- have decided to follow suit with the public interest ban-hammer.
Yes, trans-fats are bad by pretty much every metric you care to gauge bad foods by, but although it's possible to eliminate the addition of trans-fats to fried foods, some foods, like meat and some vegetables, contain naturally occurring trans-fat. 2-5% of the fat in livestock is trans-fat. Whether you’re indulging in the great British pastime of post-pissup mystery meat consumption, or searing a Waitrose fillet steak to perfection: you're getting trans-fats in some form. A Big Mac, for example, contains 1.5g of trans-fat, which is more than you want, but only about 8% of the daily amount the World Health Organization says you really, really need to keep it under. Eight percent — those hallowed arches do get a lot of stick for not-much.

Of course if you’re going to kick the back out of it and make every meal an hydrogenated frenzy of lipid-soaked disgracefulness, your longevity will no doubt be somewhat compromised. Thing is, that’s your choice. If we’re going down this tiresome road of bleating about the costs to the NHS due to the indulgences of smokers, drinkers and fatties, by all means allow them to unburden it by taking their patronage (and approx 17% of their taxes) elsewhere.
I’ll argue my lifestyle choices with my insurance company, ta.

If we don’t get a choice about paying for this very average universal health service; these interfering and self-important ancillary arms of the NHS should get precisely the square root of fuck-all say in how we end up using it.

A couple of points about the article, though:

Experts who worked on the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidelines say 40,000 of the 150,000 annual deaths are "eminently preventable".

I can tell you something right now: this is incorrect. Those 40,000 people will actually die. The question I keep coming back to is: what form of illness or ailment is an acceptable way to go for the hangwringers at NICE? What form of old-age organ-failure or gradual loss of function and faculties (while being a massive burden on the NHS) would they consider superior?

And when the fuck did it become acceptable for publically-funded ‘healthcare professionals’ to mitigate their workload by overt legislative lobbying using tax-payer’s money? I know it’s nothing new, it’s just I honestly cannot remember a time when the hectoring calls of our would-be guardians weren’t a perpetual background clamour.

Just.Fuck.Off.

Public Sector Pensions

2010-06-15T18:25:00.001+01:00

Deputy PM Mr Clegg said that was "unfair" and unaffordable. BBC political editor Nick Robinson said pensions cuts were on their way.

It’s going to happen at some point. One of the ways I reconcile selling my soul to HMG is the fact that I’m not likely to retire for about 35 years and there is not a hope in hell that the pension scheme will still exist in the same form by then. But wait, apparently Clegg is being unreasonable:

Dave Prentis, general secretary of Britain's biggest public sector union, Unison, said the government was not looking at the situation over a long enough time scale.
He told the BBC: "Over a 20-year period, costs are not going up. We have taken measures already to control public service pension schemes.
"In the health service people are being asked to go into a new scheme, in local government we've already implemented one, and the civil service have done the same.

Now there is some variation between the many, many heads of the hydra that is the civil service, but in case you don’t know, this is roughly how the civil service pension schemes work:

Assuming you’re a civil servant who started work before October 2002 - when you eventually retire, you get a pension of

(Number of years worked) x 1/80 x final salary

On top of that you get a lump sum of 3 x your annual pension upon retirement. Your ‘contribution’ to this is a massive 1.5% of your salary.

The slightly newer scheme (between October 2002 and July 2007, which I’m on until they bin it) has a greater contribution of 3.5%, and if you want the lump sum it comes out of your pension. This time however, the multiplying factor is 1/60th of your final salary; meaning working 40 years nets you 2/3 pay during your twilight years.

And there is a newer post-2007 scheme which is based on your overall average salary, but with a multiplying factor of 1/43rd and only being able to retire at 65 (the other two have it at 60). So you end up with your average career salary pretty much as your pension.

Thing is, these schemes are unfunded, i.e the ‘contributions’ are only really reductions in salary. Much like the Ponzi scheme of National Insurance, there is no ‘fund’ into which you are investing in the same manner as private sector pensions(almost none of which are now final salary-based due to the raping and pillaging of funds by Brown et al), and in return for this notional reduction in salary, the taxpayer pays you directly from the public coffers until the day you die.

You can see the details of the various other schemes here.
Why the contributions are so much higher for those who would probably be defined as ‘proper’ frontline staff like nurses and fire-fighters than for the likes of office-bound creatures like me is anyone’s guess. Well, I suppose it could be because I’m on the same scheme as the civil servants who make the command decisions regarding who pays what - but now we’re just getting cynical.

I can’t blame the public sector employees for their terms of employment (I’m hardly in a position to), but the long and short of it is that this situation can’t go on as-is. There’s too many public servants on the payroll (blame Brown’s limitless generosity with other people’s money) and far too many people in the real world whose contribution-based pensions have taken a kicking for these public-sector equivalents not to take a similar beating in the budgetary bonfire which is hopefully imminent.

We haven’t ‘earned’ that money, it’s a relic entitlement from a era when the state’s largess for it’s own was less overtly offensive, due in no small part to the public sector’s then more modest size. In these times of bloat and profligacy, if for political if not economic reasons, I reckon these schemes are as good as gone.

This, as with most of the rest of our hopes and expectations, will no doubt hinge upon the sharpness of George’s pencil next week.

The World Cup

2010-06-11T18:07:00.001+01:00

Egads, something else for me to not care about and yet not stand a chance of avoiding.

Ah well, rather than write something witty and original, I thought I’d spend my time hunting down an excerpt from a Charlie Brooker TV Go Home issue on the matter back in 2004 with which I remember agreeing with demented fervour. The only problem being that is that it’s no longer around and the archive section of the site is somewhat lacking.

So, after finding a crossroads, selling my soul to Satan, and going through some old drives filled with stuff I’ve kept for posterity; here it is the best image I could find - no apologies for quality:

This.

Printed out four times and hung out of my fucking car windows.

Galt's Gulch

2010-06-07T13:38:00.001+01:00

In a reversal of scenario and despite evidence to the contrary, I now find myself with an abundance of things I want to write about, but am too otherwise distracted to follow-through from that cursed draft stage. The draft folder mocks my weakness.

However, since I am not yet done harvesting my non-blogging friends for material, here is something else which has emerged from conversations with omnipresent Dave, He Who Glows With Perpetual Atomic Luminescence. We’ve had the beginnings of a thought experiment which we thought we’d crowdsource to see where it’ll take us.

This here is Urup, one of the Russians’ various bits and bobs they have floating about the Pacific:

It’ll do.

So if we had enough capital, and if we promised not to sell it to the Japanese, do you reckon that Ivan would sell it to us? They don’t seem to be doing much with it. And by ‘us’ I mean an enterprising group of rich people of indeterminate national origin looking to set up a place free from the baggage of your modern day first-world country so that we could go about our evil capitalist ways unhindered. Like seasteading only without the inconvenience of being science fiction.

The climate would be a little cool (but way better than the populated Aleutian Islands), but there can't be many 75 mile by 12 mile uninhabited islands. That's not just some bizarre microstate; you could have an actual country there. Obviously, we would have need of highways and maybe a railway but they’re no biggie. The volcano's are a downside too, but Iceland lives with it. And it gives it a James Bond feel.

Thing is, we’re going to need an economy to attract prospective citizens, and one widely held to be legal by the international community - otherwise it’ll all be so very awkward (and there’s a chance my readership are all sociopaths, so reign in your baser inclinations for this discussion).

With this in mind, our first thoughts gravitate toward offshore finance (and the Cayman Islands are nicer), fishing (low margin, and as it's near Japan I can't imagine there's much left) and the big family fall-back favourite: arms manufacture. But small arms are low margin, and the competition something fierce. Ballistic missiles will sell well, but will attract more attention to us than is wise. The UN embargo on North Korea does mean there is unmet demand, but only from folk the Russians won't sell to. And we don't want to annoy the neighbours.

So Hivemind, you have a blank slate.
Assuming there is a state to speak of, what form will it take? And what are we going to make or do which will fill a suitable profitable chasm in international trade in order to establish ourselves as legitimate players?

Dazzle us with your fevered imaginations.

Made up

2010-06-01T15:43:00.001+01:00

Since I seem to have broken the seal on writing again, I am presently throwing together some those long-overdue posts that I’ve been told are of vague interest. Such things take time and I’ve been having a bit of an S&M relationship with Windows 7 on the netbook recently – she treats me bad, but I can’t help but come back to her. So bear with me.

In the meantime I have been done the supreme honour of being made into one of Mr Civil Libertarian’s collectable Blogemon cards:

I have never seen somebody displace away from studying so hard since my own filthy days at university. But still: good drills that man.

Project Pluto

2010-05-28T13:48:00.001+01:00

While talking to Dave about the post on nuclear power to rule them all, he brought up the subject of a nuclear-powered supersonic cruise missile. I thought he doth jest. I thought wrong. So, so wrong.

Damnit, you were just too awesome

This machine was Project Pluto, and was a gigantic high powered missile designed by the Americans in the 50s/60s to zoom over Russia throwing out H-bombs. It would be difficult to intercept because it would cruise at Mach 3.0 at low altitude. This has the fringe benefit of leaving a swath of destruction behind it from the shockwave. The power demand would be vast (generally we try for high speed in thin air at high altitude), so it was powered by a nuclear ramjet. Suck the air in, heat it by passing it through the reactor, exhaust it for power. Essentially infinite range. They got as far as building this 'engine' and test running it out in the Nevada desert (with the exhaust just venting into atmosphere...). The plan fell down on the practical impossibility of ever flight testing this thing. It would cause devastating damage if it went wrong. And how to evaluate the test? The reactor had no poncy stuff like shielding, so you couldn't land it. Or fly it over land. Which meant you couldn't do a realistic test. So they gave up. The designers were confronted by a problem that is actually quite majestic - that this planet is too small to safely test their creation.

And these tests have gone wrong before. In the '80s some guys in Brazil found a 50's vintage US 'Snark' cruise missile (with just jets, but a 5000 mile range) in the jungle that had become lost on a test flight in 1959 and disappeared. The Snark was noted for a special combination of extreme unreliability and almost comical inaccuracy. Few weapons can be fitted with a huge nuclear bomb, function as designed, and still have an excellent chance of doing no damage at all to their intended target. Even if the target was a house of cards. Assuming no systematic error (and I wouldn't), 50% of them would hit within 17 miles of their aim-point.....and some non-zero percentage would end up on the wrong continent.

So probably for the best they didn't scale that up and go nuclear.

The Nuclear Option

2010-05-28T00:38:00.001+01:00

I would be saying nothing new by pointing out the increasing disparity between electricity production and demand in the UK. Indeed, some grapevines have it that it was a good job that the recession (and it’s associated reduction in industrial demand) came along when it did, or we may have run into trouble already. Even today, at times of maximum demand electricity supplies are stretched to the limit and predicting and allowing for future demand is subject to major uncertainties. Not the least of these is the security of fuel supplies and future prices as world demand rises and home produced supplies diminish. There has been some tinkering around the edges by way of grid diversification with some renewables, but the uncertainties cast considerable doubt as to whether or not the lights will go out at some point in the not-so-distant future. But we are where we are, and all that remains to be seen is how UK industry proceeds and how the new government helps, hinders or otherwise interferes.

Labour have left this government with certain commitments toward reducing carbon emissions (80 per cent by 2050) and EU targets on renewables as a proportion of the grid (20 per cent by 2020). Problem is, your standard ‘green’ renewables really aren’t in a state of maturity and effectiveness such that they can replace conventional power generation in any significant manner. Wind power remains an intermittent source (by it’s very nature) with high maintenance costs and relatively short operating life. Consequently, after the initial fad, commercial turbine demand has fallen 38 per cent since 2008. On the back of this, the last government made up the difference by increasing the subsidy on wind farms by way of increased Renewable Obligation Certificates. Wave, tidal and estuarial resources, which to my mind hold a great deal of promise (The Severn estuary has the world’s second largest tidal range and is predictable to the minute for hundreds of years) , will nevertheless be in no position to contribute much any time soon due to scale, technological immaturity and the timescales involved.

Christ, they’re useless

There is also the fact that any future low-carbon fossil-fuelled plants are going to be forced to adopt carbon sequestration and storage (CSS) processes; a strategy fraught because, well, we’re not sure how many stations are going to be suitable for retro-fitting and the technology itself is, again, in it’s infancy. There is also the problem of geological repositories which needs sorting. Projections reckon that CSS will reduce power station efficiency by 7 per cent, making them unlikely to beat 40 per cent efficiency. This has negative production cost implications and is below what nuclear stations can achieve.

And on that note, let’s talk about nuclear power. Once again I have recruited My Mate Dave to cooperate on this post. Without fellating him too much, he is an expert in nuclear power, and so between us (mainly him) we’re going to tell you what to think on the matter. You’re welcome.

The first major stumbling block with nuclear power is that the industry has as a well-deserved reputation for wealth destruction, right up there with the airlines. But affordability is relative, and as the availability of cheap fossil fuels diminishes and the costs subsequently increase, that route starts looking a lot more attractive.
In a concession to the generally anti-nuke LibDems, the coalition government has decreed that nuclear power has to pay for itself without public subsidy. Despite being told they’re not getting a handout, EDF and E.On are still up to build, so they at least believe the economics favour them. EDF are still proposing to crack on and apply for planning permission for Hinkley Point C this winter, with a plan to complete construction by 2017. Likewise E.On say the change of government (and policy) doesn't bother them and that they'll announce their selected reactor supplier this year. E.On propose to construct first at the Wylfa site. They were both sounding committed in this weeks scintillating 'Nucleonics Week'.

It’s well known that in France and Japan people pay quite a lot more for power, but obviously not prohibitively so. More ‘stuff’ gets made in both than the UK, so clearly it's working for them. And since our government’s energy policy is fairly opaque beyond 2012, should pragmatism sway the state down the path of public subsidy, a benefit you can see glimmering on the horizon is geopolitical freedom, in addition to all that climate change goodness and improved air quality. A carbon tax (or trading scheme) would obviously be a good thing for the nuclear industry, assuming it was applied fairly (at present, nuclear power generators have to pay the full rate climate change levy in the UK - logic unknown).

By way of planning and longevity: a modern station will sell with a design life of 60-70 years. Most of the LWRs (Light Water Reactor) built in large numbers in the 70s and 80s were designed for 40 years. The vast majority of these are expected to actually operate for 60 years after some overhaul. The parts that typically need replacing (after 30-40 years) are steam generators, pressurisers and RPV (Reactor Pressure Vessel) heads. New ones will have better materials (notably the replacement of Inconel 600 SG tubes and head penetrations with Inconel 690 or 800M; which has much less susceptibility to stress-corrosion cracking - a corrosion mechanism not understood when they were originally built), so may last better. They replaced the head at Sizewell B after only 10 years to get one with new materials, so clearly they feel the lower future maintenance is worth it.

In terms of fuel requirement, a typical reactor will run for 18 months and then shut down for a month or two to replace 40% of the core. This is about 30-35 tons of fuel. So to make all of the UKs electricity from nuclear would need about 900 tons of finished fuel per year. Now the finished fuel is isotopically enriched from 0.7% U-235 to ~4.5%, so the original uranium requirement would be (according to the back of Dave’s fag packet) about 10,500te a year. This evidently can be stockpiled, as the density of uranium is so high it will fit into pretty small space. Dave tells me he has been in the same room as two thousand tons of uranium metal (density of 19g/cc - lead is a mere 11.3), and it wasn't a very big room. Perhaps 5-a-side pitch-sized, but 3D. That 2000te is, by the way, about 11 months of what the UK will need in this calendar year. That wasn't a strategic stockpile; this was about 2002 and typical of the efficiency of BNFL's manufacturing that we had that sort of mass of material 'in-process'. The thing with natural uranium is that it cannot become critical unmoderated, so you can pile it up without concern. It’s safe it it floods too, as normal water won't work. In the UK we have a domestic conversion plant at Springfields (to make the natural stuff into uranium hexafluoride for the enrichment plants to use), an enrichment plant (Capenhurst, Cheshire), fuel manufacture (Springfields again) and the reactors, so we could stock it as ore-concentrate as it come off the boat (in 200l drums).

As 40-50% of global uranium production is in Canada and Australia, this resource has the novel feature of being concentrated in countries that are stable, democratic and not currently economically shafted. It also has the feature that the cost of power produced is dominated by the capital cost of construction, fuel price is just a small part, and given that fuel manufacture is far more of an engineering activity than mineral processing, the ore cost is pretty minor. In the same way the cost of iron-ore is not noticeable in the sale price of a new Mercedes: $100/te or $200/te is negligible compared to whether you went for parking sensors. In the last 10 years the cost of fuel went from $7/lb U₃O₈(Triuranium octoxide) to $45/lb. When the oil price nearly squares bad things often happen. The effect on price of nuclear electricity - pretty much zip.

Lovely, lovely yellowcake

Current 'reasonably assured' reserves (a strict category) at $45/lb of 5.5 million tons are enough for current demand (65,000te/year) for 80 years. There are also 10.5 million tons of other reserves (either less certain or more expensive) and 22 million tons in phosphate rock. Phosphate rock is not currently exploited for uranium but for fertiliser, but back in the 80s when uranium prices were high (to allow the really quite ridiculous build of weapons grade material embarked on during the cold war) this used to happen. About 20% of US production came this way, with other production from this source in Sweden and other places; so this isn't a speculative tech. All in, even with no reprocessing and just with current reactor designs, we could supply ALL -not just currently nuclear- Earth's current electricity generation for over 90 years. Calcs available for anyone who actually reads as far as the end in order to comment.

With current reactors and reprocessing tech we could expand this 30% or so by recovering the plutonium in spent fuel and putting it in new fuel. And then in the future we can go back to fast reactors, which would expand the resource base 50 times (without even thinking about the thorium - there's more energy in this planet’s thorium than in the uranium). There's one been running well in Russia for 20 years or so, and they're building it a big brother. The Chinese have also brought 2 of these off Ivan for themselves, which they plan to start building soon. The French plan one more generation of PWR (Pressurized Water Reactor) and then from 2040-2050 replace them with fast reactors. The Japanese are likely to follow suit.

So, if we replace the current electricity generating infrastructure (starting with coal) with nuclear, we get a huge CO2 reduction and a reduction on the need for imported gas. Now, back in the 80's the industry was completing about 20 reactors per year, so this rate is reproducible. To recover from it's current low level it'll need 10-15 years to develop a new supplier base. But as we now have much greater total industrial capacity, the WNA reckons 70 GW per year is on the cards by 2025. Continuing the growth after that, 150GW per year could replace all electricity generation in 30 years (including that which is already nuclear). So it's actually doable, amazingly. Which other low carbon energy source can say that? 1.6GW day-in, day-out for 18 months would be amazing for wind power; it's the basic unit for nuclear.

And with the impressive developments in electric cars (and this is from Dave, the world’s foremost luddite - who is still not sure about fuel injection), it's entirely realistic to expect a decent (as in so good you'd have to be him to stick to burning stuff) one of these to come along some time in the next 20-30 years. Which would mean cars and light goods vehicles could ultimately be run on nuclear generated power. That's about half global oil consumption that would go.

Fortunately they seem to have already started. All the worlds reactors suppliers are building at full stretch. The miners are opening new mines. More companies are getting qualified to make parts, including the huge forgings. Really, the WNA figure of 70 per year isn't mad. The press enjoyed reporting that there was only one company in the world (Japan Steel, fact fans) that could make the pressure vessels for nuclear reactors. Actually it was one part of the vessel for one design, but anyway; they're doubling production capacity there and there should be 7 suppliers in 6 countries in 5 years. Maybe including Sheffield Forgemasters. This is the sort of hi-end work we could still make money at.

If they can build 70GW per year that's 52-ish units. These could displace 2.2EJ of generating capacity per year; which would replace all current capacity in 70 years or so. The current nuclear plants won't last 70 years, so this includes replacing them. There is no other low carbon tech that has this kind of scale. For countries with slow growth in use, like the UK, that would work. Provide increased capacity with nuclear power, then replace coal, then gas. A slow changeover, but all of the UKs electricity from 35-40 reactors is possible. I would note that in 1989 there were 39 operating nuclear reactors in the UK (average unit size was smaller back then - needed the same number of staff though). With electric cars we could maybe even meet our 80% cut by 2050 target.

However, on a global scale cutting CO2 by 80% by 2050 is, I'd say, simply impossible. Building lots of nuclear plant is our best option, but the elephant in the corner is rising demand. They're adding about 50GW of capacity (almost all coal fired) per year in China - we'd use 35 units a year just stopping Chinese electricity generation emitting more CO2. And then there's India....

Fortunately, in gearing up for mass production humankind does well, so maybe the capacity to build and fuel 100 new units a year is possible. Coal production in Australia has doubled in 10 years, without a sniff of state support (indeed, whilst paying royalties), so I can't see what would be different with other resources there. The environmentalists and the 'that rock is sacred' brigade are, I think, a constant factor whatever you're digging for.

Going back to the most recent Energy Act that Labour produced, the narrative was very much all about 'fuel poverty' and carbon capture. With a cynical head on, we'd say it provides a way to bang out a few more coal burners that are "capable of being fitted with carbon capture equipment" whilst some sort of trial goes on to prove it won't work in practice and thus the plants are ultimately not fitted with it and everybody except the greenies rejoices in a good result. Any changes to the last government's plans to allow the nuclear industry to short circuit planning regs would be a pain though; a 4-year public enquiry to build on an existing site would screw things up royally.

So there you have it - feel our enthusiasm, hive-mind. All that remains is to see whether rationality wins the day.
Else, buy candles.

That’s how it’s done, BP

2010-05-27T16:47:00.001+01:00

I do not envy the brass at BP right now. Still, there is a better way of dealing with such trifling matters as well leaks- the Russians had this sorted ages ago:

PEACEFUL NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS

Nuclear explosions were used for extinguishing of large gas fountains, which did away with millions of cube meters of gas. First time in the world the gas fountain was extinguished by nuclear explosion on 30 September 1966 in Urta-Bulak, in Uzbekistan.

Note the 'form factor' to allow down-hole insertion

Once again, my mate Dave tells me the biggest ones used for this application were about 30kT; as they need to be a decent size to fuse enough ground into glass to seal the well.

I mean, they are just sitting there…

Bloody Someday

2010-05-26T21:21:00.001+01:00

Well, no rush fellas, take your time by all means.

Lord Saville, who conducted the investigation into one of the most infamous incidents of the Troubles, will make his findings public 12 years after the probe was commissioned by then prime minister Tony Blair.
Thirteen people died on January 30, 1972 when soldiers from the British Parachute Regiment opened fire on crowds during a civil rights demonstration in Derry.

So what do we have here?

1972 - The Widgery report says:

It’s alright, they were being shot at.

2010 – The Saville report (12 years after it started and £190 million later) says (probably):

Ok, maybe they weren’t.

Seriously, what have they done to possibly justify the time and expense incurred?
From a statement to parliament at the time:

Let me make it clear that the aim of the inquiry is not to accuse individuals or institutions, or to invite fresh recriminations, but to establish the truth about what happened on that day, so far as that can be achieved at 26 years' distance. It will not be easy, and we are all well aware that there were particularly difficult circumstances in Northern Ireland at that time.

Well if you hurry up, some of those involved might still be alive. Hang on though:

The tribunal heard evidence in the Guild Hall in Derry and in London between 2000 and 2005.

And they’ve spent 5 years writing it up?
Christ, it better be good.

UNITE for..what, exactly?

2010-05-25T15:11:00.000+01:00

So yesterday some airborne waiting staff have decided that they really do tire of employment and that it’d be best all round if their erstwhile employer was driven out of business:

I honestly don’t get it. You often hear of strikes threatened by workers when a failing company announces that they are going to have to lay off staff/cut wages/do something otherwise unpleasant in order to improve profitability. What are the strikers trying to achieve in these situations? “You’re doing stuff we don’t like because we’re not making money, so we’re going to make sure the company makes even less money in order to teach you a lesson”. The chasms in this logic can’t be lost on them, surely?

The cabin crew at BA are the best paid in the business. Thing is, BA have faced some rather pressing commercial challenges and are losing money in an increasingly competitive market. Now if you have a business which is failing, you must take steps in order to reverse your fortunes and survive. Such is life. With this in mind, BA have been in negotiations with Unite for over 15 months. Within the company, every working group except the Cabin Crew has agreed savings of the order of 5-10%, largely through salary reductions. The remuneration of the BA cabin crew is about twice that of the market average of the other airlines, and BA have been trying to address this for some time –opposed every step of the way by Unite, who generally threaten to strike every few years. This is the reason Mrs Slug and I never book BA near a public holiday (if it’s not air staff its the damn baggage handlers or caterers).

I know a stewardess who works for BA, and senior management within the company is widely despised and has been for some time, but the rest of the company sees the cabin crew –who have conceded the least to keep the company afloat- consistently holding the airline and the travelling public to ransom in order to maintain their own wildly unrealistic pay and conditions, and there is very little sympathy. They suffer from the sense of entitlement common to so many employees of de-nationalised institutions: expecting their old cut from the magic money pot. This is the result of weak management giving in to unions when times were better. Plainly this cannot continue.

Those choosing to strike when the business is in bad shape are basically telling their employer that they don't care whether the business goes bust, so long as they get their bit. I could blame the management here for fostering a working environment so mercenary that there is no loyalty to fall back on when times get tough. But the situation is what it is and the times are tough (and likely to get tougher) and it's time to be realistic; the status quo cannot be maintained. The thoroughly shafted British economy has or will have all of us doing more for less –even parasites like me- and crew getting bloodyminded with BA management has only one inevitable outcome which won't be pleasant for anyone: employees, shareholders or customers.

Nobody has the absolute right to a job. The right to work has to be earned. If I don't like my job, then I leave and find something that I do like. Failing that, I find the least awful job that pays the best in order to provide more options later. If BA cabin crew don't like working for BA any longer, then they have the absolute right to leave and find alternative employment. Similarly, employers have the right to make employees perform the role they're paid for, and if you withdraw your labour, those who run the business have to do without you as best they can –normally illustrating just how indispensible you are not and labelling those who are best got rid of at some point in the future.

I could like speculate about staff/union motivations in this whole thing like Jackart:

This strikes me as so HEROICALLY counterproductive, the only reason I can see for this is the internal politics of the Labour movement. A big strike, and a high profile corporate casualty would strengthen UNITE and Wheelan in the battle to shape the Labour party. BA employees voting for a strike are pawns in someone else's game of chess.

Possible, or they could be vying for re-nationalisation; assuming that BA would be considered ‘too big to fail’. Or they could just be idiotic ingrates who can’t count.
Whatever.
One thing’s for certain: if they don’t grip reality by both lapels pretty sharpish, the situation will resolve itself for them, and they’ll see how much a tarted-up waiter with first-aid training is actually worth down the jobcentre these days.

Quangos beget Quangos

2010-05-25T09:36:00.001+01:00

From email correspondence with friends:

I see that the proposed cuts to Britain's spending involves the creation of a 'Efficiency and Reform Group'.
This is an excellent quango. How can you possibly get rid of a quango whose purpose is to improve quango efficiency?
I exude efficiency. I shall apply.

Indeed. My patience and post-electoral goodwill on the back of agreeable soundbites is pretty much spent. Stop all this fucking about, Clammeron, and give us our bonfire.

Wakefield Struck Off

2010-05-24T16:22:00.001+01:00

What a fucking hero

Wow, there’s a title that has been too long coming, but there it is. Anyone who is a long-time reader (Hi Mum!) will know my particular distaste for this guy, the reasons for which I shall probably have to go over again in a moment. Uncle Marvo wants to know why only he among the libertarian-tainted blogs is prepared to stick up for the good doctor in this obvious witch hunt:

Here's my twopenn'orth.
Dr Andrew Wakefield announced, from some data that he put together, that there was a possibility that the MMR jab could be linked to increased risk of autism.
Thanks, Doc. I'll make my own judgment from here on in.
I bought the alternative, non-combined vaccine, from Switzerland. I trust the Swiss government more than the Fabians. I trust Lucifer more than I trust the Fabians.
I paid a Doc to administer it to my two youngest kids.
They are not autistic. Perhaps they never would have been. Who knows? I don't. You don't. Andrew Wakefield doesn't.
My choice. I make lots of choices. More than most people.
Andrew, I hope your life gets better and goes well from here on in. You had the decency to give me the information, and I made a conscious decision to act in the way I saw best fit for my children.
It's called freedom, that is. Libertarians are supposed to be all for it.

Well, allow me to illuminate as to why I am plainly such a corporatist, freedom-hating shill and why I hope that Andrew Wakefield spends the rest of his natural life in disgrace and penury. Just to maintain everyone's interest though, please pop over here first and see all the facts laid out in cartoon form, ‘cause I like to keep it high-brow. You back? Right.

I made a stab at covering the science of his studies -such as it is- last year, but I’ll sum up: Wakefield and chums performed a study of a massive 12(!) subjects, 10 of the children were autistic and he reckoned he’d found a pattern amongst them of intestinal inflammation. The Parents of 8 of these kids thought they had developed symptoms of autism right after they had the MMR jab. However, his report stated clearly:

We did not prove an association between measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and the syndrome described . Virological studies are underway an may help resolve the issue.

Despite not finding a damn thing, Wakefield went to the press and called for the triple jab to be scrapped for single vaccines until “the issue had been resolved”. Of course single jabs weren’t widely available so many parents just didn’t bother. Compliance with the MMR schedule dropped from 92% in the UK down to 85%, and measles cases soared from only 58 cases in 1998 to 1,348 cases in 2008. Which is just over a 2000% increase. Of those 1348, two kids died.
In one hospital in Ireland, 100 children were admitted for pneumonia and brain swelling caused by measles and of those, three died.

Then it turned out that what science they did do was flawed and couldn’t be replicated by anyone else, and that his hypothesis was fanciful bollocks based on exactly nothing.

Thing is, regardless of the bullshit science, the conclusions that Wakefield and chums came up with weren’t the problem –at least not entirely. No, as you can read here, the big issues which have dragged them in front of their peers are how they went about acquiring those results.

Wakefield ordered invasive and potentially harmful studies (colonoscopies and lumbar punctures) on the children without proper approval and contrary to the children’s clinical interests. One child suffered multiple bowel perforations during the colonoscopy. Several had problems with the anaesthetic. Children were subjected to sedation for other non-indicated tests like MRIs.
When human research is conducted, it must be approved by the facilities' ethics board. This study was not approved. It also turns out he bought blood samples for his research from children as young as four who were attending his son's birthday party - which he paid them a fiver for, because he’s classy like that.
And it gets better: 2 years prior to the study, Wakefield had been approached by a lawyer representing autistic children, who then specifically hired Wakefield to do research to find evidence to support a class-action lawsuit against MMR vaccine manufacturers. The children to be studied were the children of the lawyer's clients, and 11 of the 12 studied were eventually litigants. Obviously, Wakefield failed to disclose any of this in his report.
He also failed to disclose the half-million pounds in legal aid cash he received from the lawyer, via his Wife's company.
If all that wasn’t damning enough, it was discovered that Wakefield had patented his own 'alternative' MMR vaccine prior to conducting his research, and would stand to make a massive profit if he could reduce confidence enough in the existing vaccine.
Can anyone spell ‘conflict of interest’?

So no, Marvo, in all honesty I’ll have to disagree with your assessment of the man; He is a grasping, mercenary scumbag whose ‘work’ actually has a bodycount. It’s just a shame that he has only faced professional censure. Better late than never, mind.

And this is why the Internet is a good thing

2010-05-21T12:38:00.001+01:00

Brief bit of uplifting distraction for you all:
Via Sciencepunk on twitter, I find this Metafilter thread where you can read –in real time- the commenters mobilising to save two Russian girls from human trafficking:

Help me help my friend

Superb.

Takeaway points?
People are generally good if you let them be.
Kafkaesque immigration/employment laws of the kind seen both in the US and here are both irrational and counterproductive.
Vice laws are religious laws and solve exactly nothing (the perceived ‘problems’ certainly don’t disappear) while generating money for organised crime – there would be nothing to organise if there was no ‘crime’ in the first place.

Meanwhile

2010-05-19T10:06:00.001+01:00

I’m going to stop making up excuses for recent lack of posting as it’s becoming more the rule than the exception. That said, while I’m ruminating on perhaps one day having an opinion on something, I would point you in the direction of this guy who is a friend-of-a-friend and an artist in the videogames industry. He is also drop forged out of 24 carat awesome (click for the full majesty):

Genius.

Whatever passes for normal service here will resume shortly.

Honeymoon

2010-05-13T16:14:00.001+01:00

It’s been a bit weird, this election season. It’s gone from stupefyingly dull during the campaigns and the debates, to vaguely interesting at the count (with some rather random results), to a bit uncertain after the results were compiled, to some bollocky horsetrading in the aftermath, to what we have now – which is apparently some kind of feel-good, slapstick, buddy comedy. I fully expect to see Clegg and Cameron sharing a ride in an out-of-control bathtub down a hill at some point when that week’s harebrained scheme goes awry. The little scamps.

To be fair to them, it’s not been too bad so far. They’ve wasted no time at all in ditching HIPS, ID cards, the NAT register and the detention of kids stuck in the immigration system. These are Good Things. Also, the Libdems policy of raising the tax-free allowance to 10 grand has been agreed upon and there’s lots of positive noise about free-schools, elected chief constables and that Great Repeal Bill we all hunger for. So far, so Doug Carswell.

Frankly though, every time I hear anyone mention £6 Billion in ‘savings’, my heart sinks a bit. It’s all very well and good pronouncing the cancellation of things which are eminently cancellable (like the ID card scheme), but sorting out a structural £167 Billion deficit requires a bit more thought and effort. I mean, assuming they sort the bulk of that with spending cuts and not tax rises (the 20% VAT is pretty much a given, though), doesn’t that mean reducing spending on everything by about 20%? Not going to be pleasant.

With that in mind, why not join me in my favourite game of What would I cut? Courtesy of that graphic the Grun produced last September (which I keep a copy of on my desk to remind me of my place in things – see ‘Research Councils’ on the top-left).

(Click for PDF)

‘Tis pretty obvious that the behemoths that are Health, Benefits and Education are going to have to take a kicking, and that kicking will not be popular. Weathering the inevitable animosity -in addition to the resentment from many of the members of both parties who feel betrayed by the compromises inherent to this coalition- is going to be a challenge, to say the least. I’m not even mentioning the assorted hassles - practical and political- of the EU and our involvement therein; nor am I mentioning the absence of any indication of reigning back the increasingly pernicious nannying in our lives so symptomatic of the previous administration. They can wait for the time being.

So, until they actually say anything substansive (i.e realistically unpleasant) on the economy and give us some idea what the gen is, I’m reigning in my optimism for this government for the sake of my own fragile state of mind. It is far better to be pessimistic from the start: that way you can only be pleasantly surprised later.

Gordon may have set the bar low for expectations; but he shat all over the running track before he went.

Get thee gone

2010-05-10T17:52:00.001+01:00

“Get the fuck out, you incomprehensibly useless waste of carbon” - The Queen, yesterday

And as soon as he opened his mouth, the Pound tanked.
The man is a vortex of economic strife, sweeping through life destroying all prosperity he beholds. He is plainly too dangerous to be allowed to remain free: Take him away, discard him down a disused mineshaft, fill it with cement, line it with lead and let us never speak of him again.

In time he will be the stuff of myth, a subject to be discussed in terrified awe whenever economists meet to trade tales of bowel-trembling terror in hushed whispers around campfires. And still they will never really know the depths of the awful truth.

What’re you doing Nick?

2010-05-10T17:37:00.001+01:00

After a long quiet weekend of interested observation, I had had planned to write something vaguely optimistic about the future of the country in the hands of the LibDems and the Tories. Something along the lines of the best of both worlds: Tory economics and Liberal social policy. I had a happy vision of a possible future filled with repeal bills and economic woes being nipped in the bud before we go the way of the Mediterranean.
It seems I may have been sorely mistaken.
The Libs are apparently countenancing the idea of of a coalition with Labour – a concept so vile I have problems typing it.

The markets have been relatively kind to us for as long as the Tory/LD coalition has been on the cards. However, If Clegg heeds the call of the Mandlesnake, the same markets will fuck us through the floor in short order. But maybe he’s just playing both sides off against the middle, getting the best deal for his side. I could understand that. I shall give him the benefit of the doubt as I view the news through my fingers.

Don’t you dare, Clegg.

‘Tis done

2010-05-06T13:32:00.001+01:00

The filthy deed is done, but as I –like AJ- have been spared the burden of removing the threat of a resident Labour MP (as they haven’t a prayer in the Royal county), I’m less fussed about my vote as I am for getting down to Sutton tonight and watching the breathless majesty of democracy in action with Martin. I’ll take the netbook and write about all the nothing as it doesn’t happen. Will probably join in the liveblogging stuff at DickP’s place too, though.

In the meantime, in case you’re all in high spirits, remember this?

Well here’s today’s offering from the same swamp-dweller:

Oh go on, give him a chance; he hasn’t found his stride yet. All he needs is a few more years at the helm and all will be well. No, wait, the other thing.

Response:

Is that it, then?

2010-05-05T21:35:00.000+01:00

So it’s the final push and all of the leaders are pulling out the stops. iDave has decided to say things people actually want to hear regarding the repeal of outrageously illiberal laws– as though doing so 4 days before the damn poll in any way convinces us of his sincerity; Clegg has told the military establishment to go fuck their overrated selves; and the Labour territory of the twittery-bloggy world was abuzz with talk of Brown’s supposedly epoch-making speech to CitizensUK, which apparently had even non-partisan viewers moved.
Well, I live to be surprised and thoroughly shaken from my preconceptions, so lets have a butcher’s shall we?

Right. Am I dead inside and some kind of sociopathic arch-Tory stereotype, or was anyone else utterly unmoved?
To read the comments for that clip you would’ve been forgiven for thinking he’d just wandered down from Mount Sinai brandishing tablets, as apposed to knocking out a trite list of ‘things that we like to talk about but utterly fail to do in every possible way because we are the most incompetent bastards this side of Mars’.
It was certainly a good speech by his standards, but I’m honestly staggered at the scale of the psychological compartmentalisation required to cheer this fucking berserker on, knowing just how his actions have compared to his words. He’s had 13 years -breaking every promise he ever made- to demonstrate this vision of compassion and social justice he’s banging on about, and to talk now of ‘change’ is just odd, as it surely suggests a break from the dire situation he has created. Well OK then, we’ll do our best to facilitate that as soon as possible, don’t you worry.

One of the commenters on the Youtube page rather dramatically frames this quote from the monologue thusly:

"When Cicero spoke to the crowds in ancient Rome, people turned to each other after hearing the speech and said 'Great speech'. But when Demosthenes spoke to the crowds in ancient Greece and people turned to each other, they said: 'Let's march.' Let's march for justice, dignity and fairness. That's what we have all got to march for, and let's march for it together." Gordon Brown (3rd May 2010)

To which I can only add that Demosthenes was a hell of a speaker but he went on to lose his war and ended up topping himself in shame.
Not that I’m suggesting anything, obviously.

Oh and as CF pointed out yesterday, Chicken Yogurt has this fucker nailed into the ground:

‘If you fight for fairness, you will always find in me a friend, a partner and a brother,’ said Brown in his speech yesterday. Reading that next to an account of a child refugee screaming in the night at Yarl’s Wood makes my lunch rise. (Brown was non-commital at best when question about child detention. He ‘wanted no child to suffer’. Which is nice.) It reminds me of what Jamie Kenny said about George Best when the old bastard died:
I’m a football fan, but fuck the football too. It meant nothing from the moment he first raised his hand to his wife. If he could have avoided living like a swine by staying in Belfast and working at Tesco’s, then he should have done that.
I’m a fairness fan, but fuck the minimum wage too (wave it at the family living on lentils). Brown’s ‘achievements’ meant nothing from the moment that child first started to scream.

Get thee gone, thou churlish fly-bitten hedge-pig.

Insult © W..Shakespeare

Ropey

2010-05-04T20:35:00.001+01:00

Since they’re all at it, I give you the Shatner version of Common People:

Sweet Jesus, behold his insane genius.

Update: Arrgh, MrCivLib beat me to him. Nevermind, there’s plenty of Shat for everyone.

Stupefied

2010-04-30T14:41:00.001+01:00

I have checked out of the whole blogging business for the past couple of weeks as there are only so many ways of phrasing the utter transferability of all of the main candidates in this election. When your average non-politics geek says dismissively that they’re ‘all the same’ they’re pretty much right. At least you used to be able to choose between the ‘socialist lot’, the ‘capitalist-ish lot’ and the ‘woolly lot in the background, somewhere’. These days you have the career politicians representing the three sides of a metaphysical three-sided social democratic coin, each distinguishable solely by the colour of their tie. And I have to admit that I have recently switched right off to the point of not being able to write about anything else either.

There were so many elephants in the room in the leader debates I could’ve sworn one of them was asking questions. The biggest and smelliest pachyderm was that of the scale and nature of the inevitable public spending cuts we are destined to endure. That they are to happen is not argued by anyone; but no party has come even close to disclosing how they are going to find the cash to plug the self-collapsing vortex in the public ledger. In fact the first question of the final debate was on just that very point, and the answers were a hypocritical mindboggle. All three were eager to criticise each others’ figures and emphasise the resulting strife of said cuts on the lives of ‘hard-working families’, all the while cooperating with each other in not discussing the sheer scale of the problem they (and therefore we) are facing. To do so would have shown the economic policies within their respective manifestos to be the fictions that they are: all due to be torn up within a week of the election, when presumably the structural deficit of 160-odd billion will suddenly become apparent and a sight more pressing.

Ah well, only a few more days to go before we get back to mostly-lies rather than total-lies.

On a LPUK party note, I’m off to Sutton and Cheam on Thursday as one of Martin Cullip’s designated ‘observers’: where I get to see the majesty of democracy up close – which ought to be good. At least I get to spend the occasion with a decent candidate, even if I can’t find one to vote for.

Buzz

2010-04-21T12:57:00.001+01:00

Due to the fact that work is busy, busy, busy -and also because I am constantly distracted by shiny objects and interesting looking bits of string- blogging is stalled a tad.

So here’s renowned conspiracy-theorist tosspot Bart Sibrel harassing Buzz Aldrin a few years ago about the moon landing (or the lack thereof, in his fuckwitted opinion) and getting banjoed for his trouble:

And lets get another angle:

Glorious.

Normal blogging will resume as soon as I get my head together.

Brief Debrief

2010-04-16T15:52:00.001+01:00

I’m off to the northeast today because apparently we have ‘friends’ or some such that need visiting. Harrumph. Mrs Slug needs to do work stuff en route so I am sporting the ‘ubiquitous tit with the netbook in an equally ubiquitous coffee shop franchise’ look today while I wait.

So, a bit of drive-by blogging is in order.
I watched the first half hour of the ‘Historic’ leader’s debate before switching over to something less depressing, periodically flicking back over when I felt my sprits were being raised too much by imported yank TV drama and Charlie Brooker. I have been back over the bits I missed, but it didn’t seem to get much better. I’m definitely not sure what Toenails was watching, but Obo has remarked on that already.

For my money, Stuart Sharpe has the whole thing nailed.
But I shall comment before the staff at Costa kick me out:

Gordon – looked uncomfortable in his own skin and, rather than coming across like an active debate participant, sounded more like he was reading from an old PMQ script that someone had stolen the front page from. Also, I have to say that watching how disgustingly pleased he was with himself after regurgitating his tired and incredibly rehearsed one-line quips quite turned my stomach. So no change in my estimation then.

iDave – On for a hiding no matter what and the one with the most to lose, but the endless “I’m in touch with the common man” anecdotes became tiresome very quickly and came across as so artificial it was cringeworthy. Mediocre but not as bad as it could have gone.

The other chap, you know, Whatsisname – Yeah he did OK, but in this company he would’ve won by staying silent. Fair play though, he came across as a contender and was far more savvy in his engagement with the audience. Everyone there wanted to be his friend, which was nice.

All in all, if this and the fictional manifestos are as good as this election season is going to get, I’m going to seek distraction elsewhere until after the main event, I think. I’ve plenty of draft post ideas to catch up on anyway and there’s plenty of LPUK-related discussions to have.

Bloggers Bash

2010-04-14T17:49:00.001+01:00

To save me having to organise another get together (and have that turn into a fight club as well), and because the timing is fortuitous, I’m going to be popping over to the ASI at the end of the month for this:

Bloggers' Bash 2010
Title: A plague on all their houses?
Speakers:
Paul Staines of Guido Fawkes' blog
Tim Worstall of It is all obvious or trivial except…
Perry de Havilland of samizdata.net
Date: 29th April 2010
Title: 6.30pm to 8.30pm
Location: 23 Great Smith Street, London, SW1P 3BL
RSVP: events@adamsmith.org

They say to pass it around to all ‘friendly’ bloggers who may be interested. So do so.
And yes, I am even less coherent in real life.

H/T to Dave Chiverton for the reminder.

The Ringleader on TDP

2010-04-14T13:17:00.001+01:00

Just watched the boss on The Daily Politics.

I suppose it had the potential to go one of two ways:

They could’ve taken the opportunity to gain new insight into the views and perspectives of those from the fringe of the political sphere, seeing as they are unfettered by the homogeny of the mainstream parties and may have something new and interesting to contribute - which I was labouring under the illusion was the entire point of the segment.
or
They could harangue the living fuck out of the representative regarding the content of his personal blog, and berate a small political party for being, you know, small. Oh and they could choose not to discuss the party or it’s policies at all.

I suppose you cannot write as freely as Chris does without expecting it to come back at him later in some form – especially in the political world. But as it stands that was a pointless farce of an interview, completely devoid of any objectivity whatsoever.
What is the point of dragging small parties in if Brillo is just going to shout over them for two minutes? Heaven forbid he be distracted from talking to the ‘real’ politicians for a fleeting moment; I find identical party-line non-answers really engaging.

All in all, it could’ve gone better.

Libertarians for Drink Driving…apparently

2010-04-13T14:44:00.001+01:00

An anonymous commenter over at B&D’s gaff on an excellent post on welfarism, made these statements with regard to that post and DK’s recent TV appearance (whose post on the matter, with associated stats dissection, is here) :

It appears you people also support drink driving, as though kids in the back of a car making noise is in some way comparable to downing 10 pints and then taking the family for a drive. Odd.

I'm pretty sure no-one compared downing 10 pints with having child passengers in the car. What they (update: by ‘they’ I mean Bella) did say is that -like drinking- having unruly, distracting children in the car can inhibit your ability to drive safely. Both are subjective, of course: Drinking affects you based on factors like quantity of alcohol drunk, build, gender and metabolism; and kids affect you by their number, how noisy they are, your ability to control them, tartrazine ingested, voltage-rating of your cattleprod etc.
The point is, only one of these activities is criminalised, and it is done so in an arbitrary fashion. You are deemed to be ‘drunk’ if you are over a given universal limit regardless of context and assessment of your ability to drive safely.

But let’s assume for the purposes of this argument that the law as it stands is as good as we can realistically get as an incidence mitigation measure (the police can’t give everyone a driving test and maybe we have to set a measurable limit for practical reasons) and move onto the discussion point of the programme DK was on (about 44min in)- namely, whether the blood alcohol limit should be reduced still further with an aim to reducing alcohol related accidents and associated deaths. I shall skip over the fact that we are –by definition- increasing the number of ‘drunk’ people on the roads by doing this and move to why this probably won’t work in the manner they expect.

There are many behaviours that we as a society agree on as being unacceptable and which are therefore illegal - robbery or assault, for example. And while the illegality of the acts almost certainly reduces the occurrence rate, they still happen. There will never be a time when bad things do not happen. There are also some people who are more likely to commit crimes which one would deem ‘antisocial’ because they don’t care about the effects of their own selfish actions on the rest of the public. Now, while I’m sure that alcohol is an added risk factor with driving -and maybe the present 80mg/100ml limit is an entirely rational figure- there are people who know the law and drive having drunk beyond these limits anyway, excessively in some cases. And it is these people, when they have drunk to the point of becoming a hazard, who have disregarded their responsibility to others, and it is they who are the problem that needs addressing. Making this already illegal act more illegal is not actually achieving anything at all.
There comes a point where you can’t prevent the bad things from happening, not in a world of notional free-will, and have to focus on applying the law to the most egregious transgressors when they visit harm on others. Being ‘pro-active’ and attempting to legislate away all of our problems before they happen will never work. Unless we do away with all freedom and have breathalyser ignition systems on all vehicles that is, but I don’t want to give them any ideas.

Having said all that, I can't help wondering if this whole philosophy of lowering the safe blood alcohol limit to an agreed level is sending the wrong message; as although above this level you are now considered ‘dangerous’, it then makes the rash assumption that those below it are now ‘safe’. It implies that the drinking-and-driving issue is at best a matter of mathematics in adding up pints, bottles or spirit measures, and at worst a sort of cat-and-mouse game in which the drinker's goal is to imbibe up to just under the limit and the law's goal is to catch those who've slipped over it.
In either case, it helps establish the mindset that road safety is the government's responsibility, rather than the responsibility of the person who is closest to the action: the individual.

I don’t know about you, but I don't want drinkers I might be sharing the roads with asking themselves, "Am I safe after my ‘x’ number of drinks?" I want them to be asking, "How’s my hand-eye coordination, awareness and depth-perception doing tonight, seeing as how whether I kill myself or somebody else is down to me?"
That is personal responsibility, and it is a burden we as society are increasingly keen to be rid of, and it is a burden this and previous governments have been more than willing to take off our hands.

(Update: Oh and I shouldn’t forget The other half of B&D’s spirited take on the show here)

Labour Manifesto

2010-04-12T18:41:00.001+01:00

Well, I just read the Labour manifesto. No, I don't know why either.
It reads like a Fisherprice guide to running your first country - Fabian edition.
I'm also pretty sure it endorsed gumdrops for currency and was illustrated with North Korean propaganda. I would love to comment on it’s contents, but as Anna points out, it does not matter in the slightest what it says because they are not compelled to act on any of it. At all. And if the last 13 years have told us anything, it’s that they are more than capable of reneging on every sincere promise and core principle in the book for a moment of political expediency. And it really is just awful.
So bollocks to that noise.

I just need to read the Tory one to confirm my suspicions that we're getting the Underpants Gnomes running the place no matter what.

Someone remind me who came up with that analogy so I can say so.

Bravo, Sir

2010-04-12T10:25:00.001+01:00

Some people take being an embuggerance to heroic heights. From El Reg:

This chap was wondering why BT were charging him for paying his account on time, on-line. It turns out they were doing it because they can. So he cancelled his contract and decided to settle his account:

"As I'd been paying for over two years to have non-existent cheques cashed, I thought I may as well have something for this outlay, so my last cheque was sent blown up on A3 cardboard. Remember, it's legal to write a cheque on anything as long as it contains the right information - there are famous stories of a cheque written on a cow, or in one case on a fish. In the circumstances, I thought they got off pretty lightly."

Go and read the rest of it, I liked the ‘Plywood’ threat particularly.
Beware, oh omnicorp, the irked man with a handle on the law and some time on his hands.

Marmite

2010-04-12T02:47:00.001+01:00

Mrs Slug is perpetually booking the next holiday or thinking about where to go next, and so frequents the forums on such things. She found this thread on TripAdvisor, where a hapless American asks the enduring question::

So, exactly what IS in marmite? Or will we be happier if we don't know?

And some wag gave them the awful truth:

Marmite is a natural product obtained from the Alpine Marmot. The marmots are brought in from the mountains every spring and autumn equinox and after having their coats shorn the animals are then fed on a diet of oatmeal and black treacle (molasses). This stimulates the secretion of marm from the marmary glands. The marm is whisked with air at high temperature and pressure to pasteurise it and make it spreadable.

Made me laugh, anyway.

Incidentally, remember to vote for the ‘Hate’ party in the only rational election you’re likely to find in the near future. Mrs Slug votes ‘Love’. She is so very wrong.

Christian Party

2010-04-09T11:18:00.001+01:00

Bit of a distraction today. Via Tomrat on twitter, I’ve been made aware of the manifesto of the Christian Party. It’s always interesting to see what other small parties come up with, and I was surprised by how much of it I broadly agreed with. Obviously, that is ratcheted back in other areas, but still.
Reading it from beginning to end caused a regular rollercoaster of reactions from me.
Observe (my notes):

We’re up….mostly

Taxation

Introduce a single rate Income Tax of 20 per cent for earnings in excess of £12,000 per annum. (HMRC and accountancy redundancies all round. Halleluiah. Can I get an amen?)

Exempt individuals earning £12,000 per annum or less, and married couples whose combined income, being treated as one single income, is £24,000 per annum or less from all Income Tax and National Insurance Contribution. All other Income Tax exemptions will be abolished. (Generally eminently sensible WRT lowest earners get to keep what they earn. if the Labour party had even the slightest inclination towards actually helping the less well-off, this would already be policy. Indifferent toward married couples thing)
Introduce a single rate Corporation Tax of 20 per cent based on revenue minus the purchases of raw materials and inputs from other firms, wages, pension payments to workers and the purchase of plant and equipment. All other corporate tax relief will be scrapped. (Corporation tax is a combined income, sales and capital gains tax –they’d be better off leaving it out to promote growth and skimming from sales as below)
Scrap taxation on interest payments on local savings or dividends on local shareholdings.
Allow 100 per cent tax allowance for investment in plant and equipment in the year of purchase.
Set Capital Gains Tax at 20 per cent.
Abolish Inheritance Tax.
Increase VAT to 20 per cent whilst maintaining the current exemptions.
Reduce the size of the Inland Revenue Service. (which ties in to the flat rate tax from above. Happy days)

And we're down....

Respect for the human person (which I shall answer mainly by Stanhope)

Reject all attempts to re-define marriage. (I default to Stanhope on this matter)
Outlaw voluntary, non-voluntary and involuntary euthanasia by omission or by direct act, including neonatal euthanasia. (Stanhope)
Support legislation to prevent the patenting of natural genetic material, modifications to the human gene line and the trade in sperm, ova and human beings at the embryonic stage of development. (Stanhope)
End the practise of human cloning and the destruction of human embryos. (Stanhope’s 44-holed Two-headed girl Baby)
Seek the nationwide provision of pro-life pregnancy care services, including provision of accommodation for women made homeless by pregnancy, pregnant women with special needs and one-parent families. (Stanhope on Pro-life groups)
Oppose moves to impose abortion on Northern Ireland. (Why cant they be ecological too?)
Introduce random audits of abortion cases to verify compliance with present legislation. Where breaches are found prosecutions should follow and clinicians investigated by their appropriate professional bodies. (I’m guessing we’re not going to do the same for all other fields of medical care then. Lets hound those baby-killers out of town)
Call for the legal acknowledgement of post-abortion trauma as a women's disease, thereby ensuring recognition for the millions of women who have been violated, and make available funding for post-abortion counselling.
Withdraw government aid from any agency which promotes abortion or euthanasia.
Challenge the culture of death by seeking legislation which confers the full protection of the law on all human life from the conception until natural death. (Culture of death? Dude, that is so metal)

We're up....

Health

Sell off state owned hospitals and healthcare facilities to private sector healthcare providers.
Contract in services from private sector healthcare providers in order to maintain and improve the National Health Service provision.
Support initiatives, including the use of private medical insurance and compensation awarded by the courts, to bring personal financial responsibility to bear upon self-inflicted medical conditions and injury caused to others as a result of illegal or reckless acts.
Make private health insurance a visa requirement for migrants.
Oblige private medical insurers to inform the Home Office when a private medical insurance policy linked to a visa is allowed to lapse or expires.
Review Health and Safety legislation and reduce them to more appropriate levels. (To be fair, the HSE’s guidelines are mostly common sense, it’s overcautious employers/service providers and an increasingly litigious culture which cause many ‘elfin safety Daily Mail headlines)
Give parents knowledge and decision making rights regarding the medical treatment of their children.

And then we're all over the place...

Education

Keep open and resource schools in small towns and rural communities wherever possible. (Indifferent. This is relative –whatever works)
Review the size of schools in terms of numbers. (see above)
Re-instate the teaching of ‘Classical’ subjects in every school. (If we’re talking English, maths, science –did they leave? Officially, I mean)
Introduce an Education Voucher Scheme. (Good)
Support the use of reasonable force by teachers to maintain discipline in schools.(Good)
Allow schools to elect to use supervised corporal punishment as a “punishment of last resort” instead of ‘Exclusions’. (Nope –tell me about it and I’ll batter my kid for you. If I had one)
Re-instate mandatory Christian religious education in schools. (Would be odd if the CP didn’t have this, but no ta)
Seek sanctions for schools that refused to comply with their obligation to assemble pupils for an act of daily worship. Such acts of worship should be Christian. (Again, unsurprising but I’ll pass)
Ensure that the United Kingdom’s Christian heritage is properly reflected in the National Curriculum. (What, including the burnings?)
Ensure that proper balanced teaching and debate occurs in schools around the concepts of ‘Evolution’ and ‘Creation/Design in the universe’. (There’s being religious and then there’s being a twat – this policy sprints blindly to the latter)
Ensure that schools are not forced to change their values by employing those who disagree with those values. (Working on the assumption that Schools are private institutions funded by the voucher scheme above, then yeah, I guess. You’ve got some equality legislation to fight through there, mind.)
Promote vocational training in schools, Further Education Colleges and universities. (As a valid and respected alternative to inappropriate further academic study - definitely. Should not be seen as the lesser route it is now)
Link the funding of university courses to the medium and long term needs of society and the economy through consultation with industry and community leaders. (Would probably end the arts and humanities, and although I have a healthy disdain for anything not involving maths, that’s not the way forward. Would be better to privatise them)
Put an end to university tuition fees funded by student loans. (And have the taxpayer fund them instead (more so, anyway)? the budgets are battered as they are. See my last)
Call a halt to plans to give sex education lessons in Primary Schools. (I had sex education lessons –at least one establishing the fundamentals in the final year anyway – at primary school about 20 years ago. Has anything actually changed? Honestly don’t see a problem in any case)
Call for sex education classes to be given only to teenagers on a parental opt-in basis.(which is a passive-aggressive way of frowning on the education in the first place. Yes, best to keep them ignorant, that always works out just great)
Ensure that chastity before marriage and faithfulness within marriage - as the best and safest sexual practice - will be taught as an integral part of any sex education curriculum. ( This doesn’t work, ask our puritanical trans-Atlantic brethren)
Call for the end of the promotion and teaching in schools of homosexuality as a family relationship. (*Sigh*. Is it promoted or just acknowledged? )
Abolish SATs testing. (Agnostic. A tool is only as good as it’s wielder)

And then we're up again, mostly...

Support radical cuts in the public-sector workforce in order to reduce both the size of government and the size of the government spending.
Support a radical re-employment and training programme so that public-sector workers are not thrown on the ‘scrap heap’, but are empowered for a smooth transition into the private sector.
Call for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty within the first year of the new Parliament.
Call for withdrawal from the European Union in the event that the United Kingdom electorate votes against the Lisbon Treaty in a referendum.
Call for voting in civic elections to be compulsory, and non-voting to be subject to a fine. (Not this one – if you want to be apathetic that’s up to you)
Give, for the purposes of fund raising, political parties the same status as charities.

And then we're up a bit, down a bit and all a bit confused...

Law and Order

Stamp out the sex slave trade. Bring heavy penalties to bear on sex slave-traders and slave-drivers. (This is interesting; sex-slave trade rather than just the sex trade, which is what I expected from the CP. Guess I have to agree then. Unless this is a Harman-esque ruse to have a go at prostitution by duplicity, that is.)
Raise the motorway speed limit to 90mph. (Fine. May as well bin it altogether though: crashing at 90 is not much better than crashing at 110)
Enact a speeding fines amnesty in cases where fines were more a matter of revenue collection than road safety. (Bit of a dog whistle one, that, but I see what they’re going for. Easier just to reduce speed cameras)
Limit fines for overstaying in car parks to a maximum of the cost of the day rate for parking in the facility. (?!? Do you think one of their policy writers has been shafted by NCP recently? )
Establish the concept of restorative justice with the imposition of substantial financial penalties on criminals in order to compensate victims and pay for damage done to property. (best of luck getting them to pay, but OK)
Put in place a zero tolerance approach towards illegal drug possession for personal use through the use of a full range of alternative punishments, rather than prison sentences. (I really don’t see how this is a religious issue for Christians, but prohibition has never and will never work. So no. Also: Stanhope )
Ban the use of bailiffs by national and local authorities as the first face to face encounter with those in financial debt to such authorities for whatever reason. (Bit arbitrary, but I can see where they’re coming from)

And there's more over there, but you get the gist.

Basically this is the Tory party as *I perceived* (lest Mr Rob never, ever stop about it) Peter Hitchens would have it- economically conservative (which I'm all for) but socially 'conservative' in the style of the American Christian right (which I'm definitely not for, and frankly consider that to be the last thing we -those ‘right’ of centre- need to be associated with). And so while there is plenty there to agree with, they’ve managed quite expertly to have just enough theocratic authoritarianism thrown in to turn me right off again.

It is interesting where we find bedfellows on those issues we do agree on, though.

8-Bit invasion of New York

2010-04-08T14:46:00.001+01:00

Watch this for a moment of joy:

PIXELS by PATRICK JEAN.
Uploaded by onemoreprod. - Watch original web videos.

What everyone else said – Election boredom

2010-04-08T11:30:00.001+01:00

To listen to the news you’d think that election time is when politics becomes interesting. It does not. This is when it is at it’s most vacuous and boring. Whereas normally you’d assume every other thing a politician says to be a lie, now everything is a lie, exaggeration, distraction or obfuscation. Between now and the day itself you will hear nothing but soundbites and weasel-worded vote bait. Nothing of any consequence at all is going to be said or done for a month. Bold, heart-felt assertions will be thrown out based on whatever is currently trending on Twitter, and solemn promises will be handed out like Smarties.
It is all so unutterably tedious.

This year the campaigning has been even more farcical than you’d usually expect because none of the main players have made even the vaguest attempts to explain how exactly they’re to deal with the money we owe or the vast costs we’re putting on tick. It’s patently obvious what’s going to happen post-election, it’s just no party wishes to acknowledge it – which is understandable because the majority of the non-political-geek public (i.e. pretty much everyone) hasn't the slightest clue as to the scale of the trouble we’re in (see here), and the first party to be honest would be haemorrhaging votes in short order.
This leaves us with a giant shit sandwich containing the inconvenient truth hidden betwixt the ignorance of the general populace and the superficial, self-serving propaganda of the next wave of would-be rulers we’re to be assaulted by. It’s an unpalatable meal, but on the upside there is plenty of it.

Shall probably snipe from the wings anyway. I really need a less depressing hobby.

Troubling

2010-04-06T13:19:00.001+01:00

I’ve just watched this video (which I won’t embed because it’s nasty), which contains the gun camera and radio chatter from an Apache gunship in Iraq in 2007. It shows an incident where an US helicopter happened across what they plainly thought were group of armed insurgents, who they promptly dispatched. Then, when a van turns up to pick up the dead and injured, they unload on that too. It eventually turns out that among the dead in the first group were two journalists from Reuters, and that there were two kids in the van who were subsequently injured. Reuters have an article on it here. From a military perspective this is from ‘putteesinmyhands’ over at Arrse - whose demographic are a touch more informed than the likes of me (corrected for cat-like spelling):

Mistakes happen in the fog of war and when adrenaline takes over. We're also not seeing the full events - not all shots were fired or observations made by the crew whose footage we see. I'm keeping an open mind, but the video and commentary seem to suggest that at least some US troops are applying the tenet that all civilians are enemy until proven otherwise. Recall that the Geneva Convention requires that attacks be proportionate - attacking three armed men shouldn't result in the deaths or injuries of 11+ unarmed civilians (regardless of where their loyalties may lie).

The editorial line taken by wikileaks in the production of the film is pretty far from unbiased, as is their emotive framing of the footage. That said, I have some (guarded) first reactions.
I can understand the case of opening fire on a group of men -some of whom appear to be armed- in the context of the larger nearby battle eluded to by the radio conversation. I’m having trouble making the weapons out (beyond what we know in retrospect to be a camera and tripod), but I’m told there is a longer clip showing them clearly holding rifles. Glad it’s not my job to discern such things, but ok.
What is causing me real discomfort is the attitude of the gunner, who is taking far too much pleasure in his work. Observe the part where he is urging the wounded bloke to pick up a weapon so he has the excuse of finishing him off. Also, I really cannot understand the rationale behind shooting up that van as the two (apparently unarmed) occupants attend to one of the bodies. That looked really rather dodgy, and the amused commentary doesn’t help appearances.

But this is all 3 years post hoc, possibly out of context, from an obviously biased source, and I am exactly no-one to pretend to have an informed opinion, so I’m not rushing to pass judgement ‘till I know some more about what happened.

Perspectives and opinions welcome.

Update: I didn’t have to wait long. Informed and well written opinion here.

“Petty Gossip”

2010-04-05T02:42:00.002+01:00

I’ve read many people giving many very similar variations on the only decent response to this and previous statements of this kind, but I thought I’d throw my tuppence worth at you. This whole issue makes me more than a little angry and such thoughts are liable to ruin my weekend, so I’m going to be as brief as possible.
If the Roman Catholic ‘faithful’ are not swayed by the institutional protection, obfuscation and outright facilitation of the activities of child rapists, then the opinions and motivations of such people is below both contempt and recognition as that of a rational human being.
That said, I don’t buy it for a second- I’m an atheist and have made my views on religion clear before now, but was raised Catholic and in my not so humble opinion the ‘faithful’ care a lot more about their faith than they do about it’s proliferators and appointed guardians; who have been pushing their luck for far too long. It’s more toleration than veneration that the church has been coasting along on thus far.

In their perpetual insistence on doing what was right for the members of their racket, rather than what was just right, they have demonstrated just how ethically barren, and therefore just how utterly irrelevant they really are. Actually, someone remind me what the hierarchy of this -or any large mainstream religion- is actually for above that of individual churches and priests. Seriously, what?
Back to the article, there were a couple of absolutely peachy quotes upon which I must comment:

The Pope did not mention the scandal directly in his Easter address.

Well, I wouldn’t expect him to raise the affair of that priest he personally let of the hook, who may have been responsible for the molestation of upwards of 200 deaf boys. I’m sure he a has a cracking reason for acting in that fashion and to be fair it would’ve made the mass really awkward.

He said humanity was suffering from a "profound crisis" and needed "spiritual and moral conversion".

This actually made me laugh right out loud and really brightened my day. Thanks, Padre.
Oh, you’re serious?
I’d sooner take moral guidance from Rasputin on an ‘off’ day, you deranged bastard.

Meanwhile, the Pope's personal preacher has apologised for comparing criticism of the Catholic Church over child abuse to "collective violence suffered by the Jews" in a Good Friday sermon.

Wow, I must’ve missed that beauty first time around. You actually compared the calls for boy rapists to be prosecuted for their crimes -rather than be protected by self-serving old men in fancy dress- with the systematic persecution and destruction of the Jews, who would probably not mind me borrowing ‘Chutzpah’ from their lexicon for the purposes of this post. Fucking hell.

The repeated insulation of offenders from both treatment and punishment is reprehensible, and our (‘us’ in this case being the ‘developed’ world) continued kid-gloves approach to the church who’re hiding these pederasts is absolutely shameful; especially since every other adult in the country is deemed to be a ‘fiddler until we’ve passed the state-sanctioned not-a-paedo exam.

Enough of this distasteful bollocks; I’m getting back to not-working.

Bank Holiday Awesome

2010-04-04T18:59:00.001+01:00

Yes, yes, there's been ill-advised and hilariously backfiring campaign posters and members of the shadow cabinet talking themselves into contentious social issue-based knots to talk about; but what you really need to be doing is watching Red Letter Media's review of Attack of the Clones:

In case you somehow missed it, they produced an epic 70min deconstruction of Phantom Menace a few months back, which I must have watched about six times. This probably says more about my life than I am entirely comfortable with, but watch it anyway:

It was worth Jesus dying just so I can spend my extra days off watching this. Ace.

Utterly Clueless

2010-04-01T11:44:00.000+01:00

Having spent of yesterday wondering what to blog about and getting nowhere, the deadly blogging apathy was creeping back in -alongside the clinging existential dread which is the constant companion of any keen observer of modern British politics, that is. Luckily enough iDave delivers for me once again:

“Jesus, I think I might actually be the biggest dickhead on the fucking planet. Fancy that.”

If elected, the Conservatives would set up an independent bank, funded by unclaimed bank assets, to invest hundreds of millions of pounds in social action, party leader David Cameron said on Wednesday.

I see. So you’re going to set up an ‘independent bank’ funded by ‘unclaimed bank assets’, or to put it another way: a new quango is going to steal money from personal bank accounts if people make the mistake of leaving it there long enough, and piss it right up the wall.

The Cooperative Financial Services, which is involved in implementing the Labour government's own scheme to make use of unclaimed assets, said in December that banks estimated there were 400 million pounds in dormant accounts.

Ah well, best not leave it there cluttering the place up and making those nice banks look all untidy. Besides, finders keepers, right?

"We are going to bring in a new Big Society Bank so that social enterprises have access to the start-up finance they need to bid for government contracts," Cameron said at a party event held in a neighbourhood centre in Southwark, London.

So you’re stealing money the new way to pay people to compete for the other money you’ve stolen the conventional way? Sounds flawless. And there I was concerned about the economy. How is your popularity with the Tory core vote these days, by the way? Oh.
Anyway, tell us more about this ‘big society’ not ‘big state’ soundbite you’ve been throwing around - from the FT (which may or may not be behind a paywall depending on prevalent wind direction):

Britain’s 500,000 civil servants will be expected to undertake regular community service under plans outlined on Wednesday by David Cameron, the Conservative leader, to build a “big society” in place of big government.

Community service? You going to keep us (I’m guessing the like of me are included in this figure) in at weekends or is it going to be a day-release scheme where we get to pick litter with the ASBOs? Fuck it, I needed a reason to go back into the private sector anyway, but I was going to wait until we regressed to the stone age in a couple of years so that I could make my fortune building power stations - guess I'll have to put that plan together a bit quicker.
Also 'build a “big society”'? You do know that societies aren't built right? That people choose to associate with those around them and voluntarily act in a fashion which is mutually beneficial? Except, of course, if a large number of that community see no reason to get along with their neighbours because they live an existence free from responsibility and consequence. We could address that issue before going all soviet on the problem…oh wait, never mind:

The Tories also plan to train “a national army” of 5,000 community organisers to help local neighbourhoods tackle social problems, with the organisers then raising funds to pay their own salaries and get projects going.

*Headdesk*
For the love of God, this is not hard: Get the state to do less; don't shovel another tier into the already bloated public sector (because they won't pay for themselves at all, the taxpayer will end up paying them permanently ‘temporarily’ – see fakecharities.org), let people keep more of their own money; if people have more spare cash they will give it –and their time- to causes that are important to them.

And Mr Cameron said he wanted “every adult citizen to be an active member of an active neighbourhood group”.

Oh, really? Do we get a choice in the matter? I’m quite happy not interacting with my community as it is. If something comes up that I’ve an interest in, I might get involved, but in the meantime I’m busy writing semi-lucid cockwaffle on the intertubes, thanks very much.

The Conservative leader was careful to stress that he wants to build “a big society” better able to tackle a huge range of social problems from crime to housing to local regeneration as something “to add to what the state already does” rather than replace it.

But after 13 years of huge increases in spending on public services many of the same social problems in “broken Britain” remained, he said. The answer lay in a new localism, the encouragement of social enterprise and Conservative plans for a “national citizens service” putting 16-year-olds on a two-month programme in which they will “learn to be socially responsible”.

These two paragraphs cause me such cognitive dissonance that I’m dangerously close to a Scanners moment. You’re not ‘adding to what the state does’, you’re ‘adding to the state’, and someone please tell me how you can put together a course on objective social responsibility for kids without it becoming entirely political (as we’ve seen increasingly in the modern classroom)? Do you know, I think you can’t.
Oh and he follows with this gem:

That, he said, was the alternative to Labour’s approach in which “for every problem there is a government solution, for every issue an initiative”.

So he suggests a government solution and a variety of initiatives..arrrghh

Me, a minute ago

So we acknowledge the failure of previous government interventions with just about everything they’ve tried to do at a societal level, learn nothing from it at all and then describe how it will all be solved by enforced neighbourhood cooperation via diktat with a side-helping of indoctrinated kids and agents of community cohesion.

What could possibly go wrong?

Prof Cox tells us how it is

2010-04-01T09:52:00.001+01:00

Amusing.

Mea Culpa

2010-03-30T21:54:00.001+01:00

Was called into the boss’s office today, where he had my blog open on his PC. Bit of an ‘oh shit’ moment, to say the least. As it turned out, one of my previous posts had caused some strife among some colleagues, and it took them all of five minutes to work out I am me. I don’t think I’ve caused any harm, but I’d used some material without asking the people it belonged to and included some info which was a bit privileged; all of which could’ve had real-world consequences. Very twatty of me in retrospect. In my defence, I don’t expect anyone to actually read this stuff. But there you go; takes all sorts.
Said post has been gladly expunged and is not long for the caches.

So Hi to any bods from work who’re reading and sorry if I made anyone's morning a bit awkward.

On the bright side, I had quite a positive chat with our PR/Communications chap and he was very supportive of my modest science writing efforts – he just asked that I run any work-based stuff by his lot next time; which is fair enough, if only to make sure I’m not talking bollocks. I do hate it when I do that.
Bit of a rum day, all told.

As you were.

The Daily Mail Song

2010-03-28T20:35:00.001+01:00

A song which has been doing the rounds about everyone's favourite reactionary rant-pamphlet; who are so very useful as source material for bloggers who just absolutely have to be angry at something.

Produced by Dan and Dan.

More LHC fun –Halfway there

2010-03-28T18:43:00.000+01:00

From XKCD, where else?

People often express their frustrations at the perceived lack of progress with these big hyped-up projects, seeing as how the next scientific breakthrough is always just over the figurative horizon. That’s because these endeavours are always phrased in terms of palatable timeframes in order to not lose the attention and interest of a public so increasingly used to instant gratification. If it was explained that all of science is essentially a series of tiny incremental recursive changes, constantly and slowly adding to and revising the work that has gone before in steps barely perceivable to a lay audience, it would be a lot harder to secure funding –at least as long as the laypeople control the purse strings (which they do overwhelmingly in this line of work, for good or bad)- especially when political terms of office are measured in 4-6 year increments.

So what we end up with is science press releases and the associated reporting pared down to the language of the ‘real’ people (while financial and sporting news is left with all its jargon and specialist language intact for some reason), and every potential discovery is always described as ‘revolutionary’ and is inevitably predicted as being a bearable round figure of months/years away. The reality is often somewhat at odds with this; science is a ruthless, hard-faced bitch who cannot be reasoned with, who laughs at our naive attempts at self-improvement and thinks nothing of wasting entire careers down blind alleys of non-discovery.

All that said, the LHC (upon which I have given my reckon before, here and here) has the potential to actually produce revolutionary results (no, really) –what with it eventually destined to show us why mass has mass and all that. It has broken new records for beam energy recently (previously held by Fermilab’s Tevatron), cranking up each individual proton beam to 3.5TeV apiece, for a combined collision energy of 7TeV. You might remember that it was originally designed to be run at 14TeV, but they are being a bit cautious with it at the moment, lest they break it again.
So they are going to spend two years running it at half strength before being shutdown for all of 2012. During that year they’ll be checking -and modifying where necessary- the splices between the superconducting magnets, one of which was responsible for the unpleasantness in 2008. And then in 2013 the energy will be ramped up to its maximum of 14 TeV. Probably.

There are and have been plenty of naysayers criticising the perceived lack of engineering rigour that has resulted in the expensive modifications and protracted operating programme, but the thing to remember here is that there is no previous LHC-building experience to learn from. This is the only one that is or is ever likely to be built, and although the people involved have worked on accelerators all over the rest of the world, they are all very much learning on-the-job.
Frankly, based on what I’ve seen is involved in the running of our comparatively tiny synchrotron at ISIS, I’m amazed at all the problems they haven’t had. For all of the handful of issues that the LHC has been seen to have, they’ve had literally thousands of systems and subsystems working just fine. It’s an awesome feat of engineering.

So on the 30th March they’re going to start the first science cycle using the half-power beams, which should provide plenty of new results to tide them over before the ‘proper’ runs in 2013. During this time they should be able to observe particles indicative of extra dimensions or supersymmetry, as well as the properties of the W and Z bosons and the top quark. Although finding the much vaunted Higgs particles, although possible, will probably have to wait until we get the full-fat beams, as any evidence will probably be hidden by background signals at these energies.
Remember that part where I said how real-world science has problems gelling with the hype? Well listen to my hype when I say we’ll get there in the end, but reality is not malleable to the whims of headlines.

If you want to watch the webcast of the first physics run on Tuesday, you can get the details here.

Belated Budget Bollocks

2010-03-26T17:45:00.000Z

BANZAI!
(I don’t know why that is funny or relevant but it amused me writing it anyway. Possibly an alliteration thing)

So this was the governments last chance to show the voting public that they weren’t talentless morons with a guilty penchant for economy-buggery and that they really could be trusted with the metal scissors like big boys.
Well that didn’t happen, 'twas a big bag of bollocks (yep, definitely going for the alliterative effect today). I’ll just pick bits out and rant:

No stamp duty on houses <£250K for first time buyers – first off, I have no idea why the housing market needs bolstering, bearing in mind that hugely inflated house prices were largely responsible for the false economic growth during the Brown years…oh, hang on.
Even if we’re working on the assumption that they’re trying to re-inflate that particular bubble, I’m not sure that £2k stamp duty is what’s holding back first time buyers from finalizing on that £200k house. Just saying.

Growth predictions – Darling reckons 3% next year, the most optimistic economists reckon about 2.2%, which in and of itself means his calculations for total debt are already shitcanned. Personally, baring in mind that the existing 0.1% ‘growth’ could just as well be a rounding error, and factoring the cynicism-fuelling nature of recent history – I’d be amazed if it was even that.

Tax rises – in one sneaky way or another, we’ve acquired £19 billion pounds worth. Well, it was going to happen one way or another in order to pay back all that magic money that Gordon has been so generous with over the past 13 years. All we need to accompany it are some cuts in public spending…*looks down*…fuck.

Public spending – Overall, increased by 2.2%. Sweet Jesus. They are Labour, they are addicted to spending money and they will just never, ever stop. They, like their supplicants, either actually believe that this will all just work itself out magically, or they know that it won’t and are lying either to us or themselves - and I’m not sure which is scarier. As I’m writing, BOM’s new’un has just appeared in my RSS reader on the very subject, so off you go to someone who knows what they’re talking about. I’ll wait.

Debt – Amazingly, this was presented as good news: apparently the deficit will only be £167 billion, compared to the original estimate of £178 billion. Which, to quote a Stuart Sharpe tweet, means “Our guess about the future is lower than we guessed our guesses might be.” Right you are then.
Take a cookie Darling, you random number generating winnet, you.

Finance- And then there was the new quango, which will be able to force banks to make loans to businesses they normally wouldn’t by way of a credit adjucation service. Apparently their benchmark for such things, rather than being the financial viability and responsibility of the loan, will be 'fairness'. The warning bells, they are a-ringing.
So, on the back of a crisis caused mainly by irresponsible lending, the government is going to force banks to lend irresponsibly -while preaching responsible lending, naturally.
This government is Kafka and Rand’s crack baby.

Tax- Despite the infamous elimination of the 10% tax band, effectively meaning a 70-90% marginal tax on the very poorest, the personal tax allowance threshold has been frozen. Allowing for fiscal drag and increased duties on fuel (and therefore pretty much everything we buy), alcohol and ciggies; this amounts to a tax raise across the board. A friend to the poor these people are not.
Oh and they’ve put 10% above inflation (including VAT, my maths has that about 15%(?)) onto Cider as well – that’ll stop those pesky teenagers and their binge drinking. It’s all down to cost and availability you see, that’s why the continentals -with their cheap and easy to buy alcohol- have so much more trouble than we do…oh wait, no the other thing.

The announcement which garnered the most enthusiastic response from the Labour benches -and what to me is most indicative of both this government and modern British politics in general- was Darling’s deal with Belize, whereby that country would share tax details of Non-dom Brits based over there. Gee, I wonder who they had in mind.

So, while the country languishes in near-certain economic doom, and when presented with an opportunity to mitigate the damage and at least pretend to be steering us toward sanity, they fuck that up and then take the time and effort to secure a frivolous diplomatic arrangement with a foreign power in order to inconvenience the entirely legal behaviour of one fucking man because he is a donor to the main opposition party? This is what the government is doing with it’s time, with our money?

Observing the response to this little caper, at the mooing horde on Labour’s side of the room, and that shit-eating rictus stretched across the face of their lumpen troll leader, I felt a sick mixture of amusement and disgust. Amusement because the choice is laugh or cry at this pathetic theatre of governance, and disgust because that is the only just reaction to our lives being toyed with in such a contemptuous and indifferent fashion.

Maybe they all realised that it didn’t matter, that either the Tories will get in (which is looking increasingly doubtful) or the IMF will be called in in a few months and they’ll force their hand on cuts and taxes and can be therefore blamed. I don’t know, I’m starting to not care.

Right now I’m inclined to find a good vantage point, grab hold of something and watch the whole lot collapse.

Nail in the coffin

2010-03-26T15:21:00.001Z

Whatever DINGs faults -and they are plentiful- he has always been a better spokesperson and frontman than Gordon. At least that has always been my assessment of the man. So, in my case via Mark Reckons, we see what happens when you take him out of his comfort zone, take his script away and make him, you know, have an opinion:

Once again, I’m astounded; I do believe Gordon could have done better than that.

Get thee gone you meritless fucksplatter.

Home Office in ‘talking bollocks’ shocker

2010-03-26T09:22:00.001Z

A Home Office advertising campaign to publicise a key policing pledge is to be banned by the advertising industry regulator, it has emerged.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said the television advert promoting the Government's promise that neighbourhood officers can now be expected to spend 80% of their time on the beat breaches its "legal, decent, honest, truthful" code, The Guardian reported.

In a ruling due to be published next week, the ASA said the ad was misleading on at least three counts.

This is delicious, or at least it would be if it were not us paying both for the advert and for the services that they’re lying to us about.

It also said the film did not spell out that the pledge does not apply to all 140,000 police officers in England and Wales, only to 13,500 neighbourhood constables and 16,000 community support officers in neighbourhood policing teams.

Oh, so a minor point then. Just nit-picking really. Either that or it was out-and-out bollocks; vapid propaganda to paint a veneer of competence on a failing service and an utter waste of time, money and effort. One or the other.

Game Over

2010-03-26T09:04:00.001Z

Just fuck off you useless cunt – seriously, what fucking use are you?

It’s probably time to reconcile ourselves to the fact that our feculent parliamentary incumbents are likely to remain there. Not because they’ve managed to win people over, mind you. No, it’s because iDave has managed to somehow look like the poorer option. The poorer option against the least competent prime minister ever.
How do you do that? How?
Obo’s says how here.

It could have been so easy as well. All he needed to do was make some noises about ratcheting back the endless surveillance, some allusions toward a smaller state, a mumble about reduced spending and an under-the-breath hint of lower taxes. You know, be a Tory.
But no, he chose to be the second coming of Blair, because he thought that’s what we want. Seriously. That’s right Dave, having watched the country be nannied, taxed and bullied into penury, what we want is more of the same. You utter, utter seafaring throbber.
They had an open goal; they chose their target, aimed their kick, swung, missed and fucked themselves right in the mouth.

Oh and if you’re not depressed enough, here’s a conversation from Facebook I found among some people I used to go to school with:

This is what staying in Wales does to you.

Gordon’s getting back in, the country is facing ruin, and it’s everything that we deserve.

Erm, guys

2010-03-24T16:05:00.001Z

I can see more trees over *there*:

“Bollocks to Gaia: people are fucking in cars, for Christ’s sake. Tear it all down, it’s dirty dirty dirty!!"

Jean Rigby, a local councillor, said: "The area will be replanted with native species that, in 20 years, people will see the benefit of.

This statement is so stupifyingly stupid I can’t believe she didn’t say it on purpose and that she is in fact a master of satire.

A spokesman for United Utilities said: "They were old and at risk of falling into the road causing an accident. Following a health and safety survey, a license was applied for and granted through the Forestry Commission to fell them.

6000 trees were at risk of falling over? Does this happen often?
This is some kind of puritanical make-work scheme surely?

We’re rubbish at insults…

2010-03-22T15:35:00.001Z

…compared to the Bard.

Thou surly plume-plucked death-token!

Thou mangled fat-kidneyed miscreant!

Thou churlish shard-borne flap-dragon!

[Thou] appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.

and I may need a hand with this one from any passing literature/history scholars:

Be put in a cauldron of lead and usurer's grease, amongst a whole million of cutpurses, and there boil like a gammon of bacon that will never be enough.

I have to ask: what is usurer's grease?
What does an usurer have that needs literally lubricating?

(Link H/T to Furor Teutonicus)

JOSS ACKLANDS SPUNKY BACKPACK

2010-03-22T15:18:00.000Z

I’m a bit slow on the uptake but apparently we’re making things illegal again. I was beginning to think it had been too many days since last time…

So there’s this new drug and it needs banning because someone, somewhere is having better weekends than me. I’m talking of course about Methadrone (also known by a street name straight out of Brasseye: Meow meow). It’s a relatively new recreational drug which is chemically similar to MDMA, and all of the MSM news outlets are reporting that two kids died after supposedly taking it – and take it they did…along with methadone and alcohol. In case you don’t know, mixing alcohol and methadone is a really bad idea. From here:

As in heroin cases, the threshold for fatal methadone
overdose would also appear to be lowered by alcohol,
especially in females. Female methadone maintenance clients
who use alcohol may therefore be at elevated risk of fatal
overdose.
• Treatment agencies and policymakers should consider alcohol
use to be a principal risk factor – alongside reductions in
tolerance and quantities of opioids consumed – in developing
their opioid overdose prevention strategies.

You’ll notice that neither Auntie Beeb not the (inevitable) Mail piece saw fit to mention the rest of the messed-up cocktail they were on. I mean, if you’re taking a combination of things known to be fatal and a silly sounding new drug; it’s obviously the new drug which has killed them, right? But let’s not let troublesome facts get in the way of a good prohibitionist scare-story; we’ve got children to think about here.

It always comes down to this: We make drugs illegal, people take them anyway but at much larger risk to themselves because the quality/ingredients/contaminates become completely unknown and we as society acquire considerable associated crime. Nothing is solved apart from the completely superficial removal of blatant drug use from the street. When people then choose to find entertainment elsewhere via legal alternative means of reality-bending, the tabloids jump on it, create disproportionate hysteria, and promptly campaign to make it illegal so that that can generate some criminal records and fuzzy feelings of self-righteousness too.

There’s no rationality behind it; tobacco and alcohol have far worse health implications than many illegal substances, they were just around long enough before the prohibition of everything else in the 60s in order to be acceptable. And we won’t drastically change policy toward decriminalisation of drugs for fear of upsetting the handwringers (who Mark reckons are almost certainly in the minority) and -on the global political stage- the Americans, whose own (entirely puritanical) laws force the hand of anyone else who wants to stay on speaking terms. It’s a war, you see, and we must stand united until all those beastly drugs give up and go away. They’re speaking from previous successes, obviously.

This kind of thing is Mr Civil Libertarian’s forté - so go read his stuff.

And, because I’m making him my cult’s leader, here’s Doug Stanhope on the subject:

Oh and there’s an informative article in New Scientist on M-Cat here, and a doctor chum tells me it’s not very nice.
Shame they can’t put that on a label then really, isn’t it?

Some manner of milestone, I suppose

2010-03-22T14:21:00.001Z

It appears that today we shall bust this blog’s 50,000 hit cherry. Going by the statpr0n, this would have happened quite a lot sooner if I were not the least consistent blogger going. Seriously, the graphs look Gaussian.
But I’m nothing if not utterly contemptuous toward my readers.

With that in mind, first visitor to punch past 50k and comment will receive a shuddering faceful of sluggy slime. I won’t respect you in the morning, though.

Sign of the times

2010-03-22T13:55:00.001Z

Right, I’m going to stop apologising for the lack of posts because it’s becoming more the norm than not. Life is inconvenient like that. That said, I had high hopes of writing something going into the weekend, but they were dashed by being dragged off to a cottage in Sussex to be frightfully middle class with some friends.

While we were sat around the table eating dinner, it occurred to me that of the nine of us:

2 of us worked in some capacity for the BIS (i.e. for Mandy *shudder*) – Me for a research council and another directly for a university
2 of us worked for the NHS - One as a doctor, the other as an occupational therapist
1 of us (Mrs Slug) worked for local government
1 of us was a full-time Academic
1 of us worked for English Heritage

Leaving just 2 taxpayers – One freelance cameraman and one bloke who worked as a recruitment consultant. It paints a bit of a stark picture.

I think it was a post on Samidata last year that suggested that public sector employees shouldn’t pay tax; not that they should be paid any more than they already are, just that they should keep their Net pay and do away with the theatre of generating tax revenue. If you work -like I do- for the public sector, someone else who isn’t is paying for it and you are in all likelihood contributing no money at all. The pantomime in your payslip is merely moving someone else’s money from one government pot to another.

Which is to say, it isn’t that all public sector jobs are without merit, or that public employees don’t earn their wages – although if your job title involves the words ‘outreach’ or ‘facilitator’ you are most likely on Gordon’s Special Dole – but people need to be aware that unless the private sector grows, money is not made, and it is this money that pays for everything else.

But as long as Labour or (whichever flavour of social democrat is in power) continues to pour private money into the gaping public sector maw, we will travel further down the Greek path of national oblivion.

As for me, if my outrageous gold-plated civil service pension still exists in the next thirty years I’ll be stunned. So I’m sat on my high horse in the meantime, assuming otherwise.
Besides, I’m going to wait for the lights to start going out in the next couple of years and get back into the lovely business of nuke station building in order to make my fortune; at least then the public money will’ve been laundered a bit.

19th Century Manly slang

2010-03-17T14:09:00.001Z

Via a friend I’ve been alerted to this fresh seam of brilliance:

The Art of Manliness Dictionary of Manly 19th Century Vernacular

Some examples:

Anointing: A good beating. A case for the application of salve.

Perpendicular. A lunch taken standing-up at a tavern bar. It is usual to call it lunch, often as the Perpendicular may take the place of dinner.

Sneeze-lurker. A thief who throws snuff in a person’s face, and then robs him.

and bizarrely:

Hogmagundy. The process by which the population is increased.

The lot should be committed to memory and re-introduced to the common vernacular forthwith.

Immoral Earnings - Redux

2010-03-17T10:00:00.001Z

Preface
Right, this may look a bit familiar because it’s a rewrite of the post I put up this morning. Mrs Slug thought the legal stuff needed some attention, and so thought she’d collaborate and throw in her tuppence worth. It’s worth reading for the conclusion; I didn’t see it coming.

Yesterday, Mrs Slug phoned me up to tell me about this story, and I knew I’d find it already up over at JuliaM’s place, and there it was. Basically, a maths teacher sexually abused a four year-old boy and when his parents found out about it they accepted £18,000 from the man rather than telling the police. Four years later, the child told someone else about what had happened and all this came out, causing bafflement and outrage from everyone. In fact, it’s probably safe to say that observers are more critical of the parents than they are of the offender, seeing as they have seemingly cashed in on the abuse of their child to get on the property ladder.

I generally avoid the Daily Mail dogwhistle childcare stories as you only ever get their inflammatory version of one side, as the local authorities have to abide by confidentiality rules; but this is a bit unique. Most commenters are asking why the parents haven’t been arrested themselves and are otherwise questioning whether the child should still be in the parent's’ care. So, while taking dictation from Mrs Slug, I’m going to go through some of the details, as these cases are never as simple as they first appear.

I’ll run through some of possible crimes suggested that the parents be charged with in the comments over at Julia’s blog and on the Mail article:

Blackmail/Extortion – The definition includes the phrase unwarranted demands with menaces. For all we know this was his idea.

As an aside the maximum penalty for blackmail is 14 years in imprisonment. The crime in this case is reported to be causing or inciting a child under the age of 13 to engage in sexual activity. A crime with a maximum sentence of life imprisonment or 14 years if the activity did not involve penetration. Apparently he got a three-year community sex offenders' treatment programme, placed on the sex offenders' register for ten years and banned from ever working with children. You can decide for yourselves whether this would have been a greater punishment (or indeed deterrent) than forking out £18,000.
Yeah, thought so.

Conspiracy to pervert the course of justice – As far as we know they haven’t fabricated or disposed of evidence and they haven’t intimidated or threatened any police, jurors or judges. And they’re not interfering with a witness because there wasn’t a case in the first place.

Child Cruelty/Neglect – are part of the same offence in criminal law, (the police would have to prove that the parents had wilfully assaulted, ill-treated, neglected, abandoned, or exposed him or caused or procured him to be assaulted, ill-treated, neglected, abandoned, or exposed, in a manner likely to cause him unnecessary suffering or injury to health (including injury to or loss of sight, or hearing, or limb, or organ of the body, and any mental derangement).
However unsavoury we find their behaviour, they didn’t commit the offense itself, and there is no legal compulsion to report the fact that someone else did, unlike with crimes like terrorism.

Having said all that, it is unlikely that the CPS would bring charges anyway because it is very definitely not cut-and-dried and relies upon the proof of a deliberate or reckless inaction causing this child harm beyond reasonable doubt. They would also have to consider whether it was in the public interest to drag this already troubled child through the ordeal of a criminal trial –of his own parents no less- which is frankly, dubious.

What we are therefore left with to make sense of the situation are social services- who will never win in the eyes of the tabloids or blogs because it’s always either too much or too little. Several commentators were quick to demand that social services act against these parents, which means the social workers would have to consider if there are child protection concerns. The threshold for this is that “a child has suffered or is likely to suffer significant harm as a result of the care afforded to him not being what it would be reasonable to expect a parent to give to him/her”.
So have the parents’ actions/inaction caused harm to the child?

First, did they fail to adequately protect their child from this man? Probably not, particularly as this person was a teacher, and they couldn’t have known beforehand.
Second, this case has arisen because the child has told someone and it is therefore suggested to still be traumatised by it some 4 years later: were the parents neglectful by not reporting the case and getting him the support that he needed sooner? Because of the lack of action and pretending that it all never happened, it is entirely possible that they have caused more psychological harm than the initial act of abuse itself.
Third, whatever happened, they didn’t report it and so the child did not receive medical attention if he needed any.
Fourth, what kind of messages does this send to the child in terms of right and wrong and their ability to protect him?
Finally, in criminal proceedings consideration is given to compensation. The guidelines say that compensation should benefit, not inflict further harm on, the victim. Any financial recompense from the offender for a sexual offence may cause the victim additional humiliation, degradation and distress. The parents certainly don’t appear to have thought about the impact on the child of accepting this payment.
Harm in this situation could be physical or emotional abuse and neglect, and social workers will have to consider whether this child has suffered emotional abuse and neglect as a result of the parents’ inaction. The existing body of research and experience suggests that the best way to assist children like this is professional assistance at the earliest opportunity. A nice house isn’t going to magic away four years of this child trying to cope with this on his own.

So, after all that above and comments from all corners describing these parents as “disgusting”or “reprehensible” the one thing I’m going to write which is most likely to offend everyone is that these events in and of themselves do not make them automatically bad parents, as hard as that is to believe, and indeed, type.

What is critical to this case is the motivation and rationale of the parents in making these –to most people- morally abhorrent decisions. What we could have, for example, is a rough parallel to the Shannon Matthews case, where the parents have cynically and selfishly used the abuse of their child for personal monetary gain. That would certainly make the question of removing the child a lot easier.

But what if they came to this decision based on a pragmatic –as they saw it- evaluation of the situation and chose the path they thought was best for their child? Maybe they believed the remorseful pleadings of this teacher, were convinced he wouldn’t do it again and didn’t want to put their boy through a criminal trial. Maybe they realised that the £18,000 offered was markedly better than the sub-£2,000 they’d get from Criminal Injuries Compensation, and that they could turn this horrid situation into a better future for themselves. Maybe they underestimated the effects of the abuse on their son, because he was so young. Maybe they thought that this was punishment enough. Maybe they have had experience of the criminal justice system, and that they think this is all all the ‘justice’ they were likely to get. Maybe they feared the intrusion of social services, and recent headlines wouldn’t have helped. Maybe they’re just not that bright.
I don’t know and neither do you and neither does the Daily Mail. If we play make believe for a moment and convince ourselves that this man did not pose an ongoing risk for children and that the question was: go to the police or get £18,000, I wonder how many of us would not opt for the latter

The case is unusual and it does raise questions from a libertarian perspective: Almost all of us would’ve handed this guy in for his crimes and for the protection of the community as a whole, but as the law requires you to do no such thing –should it? It wouldn’t be surprising to hear of tedious kneejerk legislation springboarded off this case to compel exactly that, indeed I’m surprised there isn’t already a law commanding that we inform on all crimes we witness.
As it stands the rarity of this kind of thing would suggest to me that such a legal requirement would be a solution in search of a problem.

So it’ll no doubt be on the books by Friday.

Addendum
The advice of Mrs Slug with 20/20 hindsight: they should have acted on impulse when they found out, the Mother should have picked up the nearest innocuous item like the doggy doorstop and killed him. They would have probably been let off after a bit of a show trial, the child would have got the necessary support from professionals and the parents would have been branded as heroes and given £50k from Daily Hate for selling their story. Result.

These are her words….fucking hell, I’ve married Littlejohn.

Cause and effect

2010-03-16T19:35:00.001Z

Brief comment on this one:

Sports players and fans are being targeted in a campaign to get more sperm donors to help couples struggling to conceive.

My first thoughts are whether we should be encouraging people to breed anyway, as I’ve really been swayed by the calls for zero population growth. Cue Stanhope:

But if we really must submit to the biological imperative, and would like to help these couples who cannot conceive on their own, the culprit for the shortfall is in the article:

The number of new sperm donors dipped in the UK in 2004 to 224. The law changed in 2005, meaning egg and sperm donors did not have the right to anonymity.

For fucks sake, why?
First off, why the toss would a guy donate sperm for this cause if he runs the risk of (potentially several) full-grown kids rocking up at his house in eighteen years time?
And secondly, why the hell do the kids need to know who this person is? He is a ‘parent’ only by virtue of his genetics; he is both a stranger and an irrelevance to them. They don’t gain anything other the chance to meet someone with perhaps some physical similarities or maybe an organ donor. And having some kids come a-huntin’ for your kidney at some unknown point in the future is not something which adds to a persuasive argument for donating.

So if they want more donors, do away with yet another fucking ‘right’ that we’ve somehow acquired –ostensibly to assuage the curiosity of some teens with identity issues. Then blokes can fire away without the risk of their future lives getting really awkward.

Scoobied

2010-03-16T18:41:00.001Z

Urgh.

Spent four days being daringly unafraid of stereotype by boozing it up with some chums in Benidorm for a stag do. In case you haven’t had the pleasure of going there off-season; Benidorm is a retirement village full of Spanish pensioners on state-funded holidays for the rest of the year. Chippy fuckers with an entitlement complex they are as well. And it was cold.
Anyway, I got back yesterday about midnight, had four hours sleep, dragged myself through a day of semi-productivity, clocked out an hour ago and then fell asleep at my desk. Got a while before the missus picks me up, so we’ll see how bloggingly productive I can be.

Stand by.

Stop...Carry on

2010-03-12T00:53:00.002Z

Right, I’ve got those blogging wheels aturnin’ and I’ve got some more ideas of things you desperately need my opinion on. Thing is, I’m off to Benidorm for a few days tomorrow (stag do – I keep trying to convince my snobby self that we’re going in a twatty ‘ironic’ way, but we’re totally not. You’ll no doubt see me on some hateful late night Channel Five program about problem Brits abroad) so I’m going to have to try and keep them in the air lest the inspiration leave me again.

So in case I forget, I need to do the following:

Follow up the half-arsed climate change post from December – that ought to lose me some friends.
Obligatory LHC update, for those who’re into that kind of thing..
Since I’ve been doing the globetrotting thing, write about the bolt-hole viability of Oz (drafted November 09) and The States (drafted Dec 08(!))
Comment on teh evil Social workers/childsnatchers we’re so fond of. That one will be in concert with the missus, who can’t write this shit herself because she has people for that kind of thing.
Oh and I’ve got something on the merits of national databases round here somewhere. I only do it for the argument really. Consensus is for pussies.

This is for my benefit more than yours. I’m so fundamentally lazy and distractible I need to generate some stress or it won’t happen.If I comment before Tuesday, please allow for irresponsible drunkenness.

As you were.

Lets boycott the nasty man

2010-03-11T20:20:00.001Z

Shhh! Don’t listen, maybe he’ll go away…

The more fucked Labour become, the more off-message Tom Harris gets, and the more we all like him. There is a world of difference between socialist leaning people who actually believe what they’re doing is right for the country (regardless of how wrong they are), and the cynical, grasping cockends who say lefty things in order to ride the red team to the trough. I like Tom. Today, we are all violently agreeing with his comments on the proposed boycott of Total Politics by some Lefty types, because Iain Dale had the temerity to interview Nick Griffin. I encourage you to go and read his post, because if I quote anything, I’ll have to quote all of it. I’ll paraphrase:

The BNP have democratically elected bods, even if they are knuckle-dragging throbbers.
We should be encouraging political discussion in this age of apathy.
The Left (or anyone) boycotting a contentious issue removes their voice from the discussion.
The ‘no platform’ approach is seen as an avoidance of the issue, which drives people to the BNP even further as they’ll be seen as the only ones taking it seriously.
Why the blithering fuck are the left always calling for boycotts and bans? (Although I’d add they are hardly alone in this; have you read the ‘Mail recently?)

Good points all, and I’d remind you of the farce which was Griffin’s appearance on Question Time (see CF’s majestic commentary of the event here), where somehow the Griffin was made to look a victim of the mob. Thing is, despite my preconceptions of him as a bit of a showman, he came across particularly poorly when he was actually allowed to speak. And if he had been allowed to spout his superficial, economically illiterate, ‘Old-Labour-with-added-racism-minus-any-intellect’ routine he would’ve buried himself with his own inadequacy in short order.

So don’t silence him: let him say his bit, laugh, shake your head and file under ‘idiot’.

Ersatz high street

2010-03-11T13:26:00.001Z

Satire has just eaten itself:

Fake businesses are to be used to lessen the impact of the recession on high streets in North Tyneside.

The government-funded project involves colourful graphic designs featuring a range of different shop types, which are either taped inside the windows or screwed to the fascia so they can be removed and reused as required.

I mean it’s not real as such, but it looks it and that’s almost as good, right comrade?

Fuck me.

LPUK manifesto - Independent Nukes

2010-03-10T16:14:00.000Z

A twittery conversation with Dave Chiverton (who I’ve neglected to blogroll - rectified) yesterday highlighted to me this point of our (LPUK’s) manifesto which I’d never really given much thought:

Nuclear deterrent to be made truly independent, retained, maintained and eventually replaced for the foreseeable future.

Leaving aside the issue of the desirability and motivation for maintaining our own stock of A-Wasters, I thought I’d jot down my fleeting, semi-informed thoughts on the feasibility of such a plan.

Well for a start there are several areas of technical development we in the UK have no experience of, namely solid fuel propulsion of a missile that size and stellar guidance. In theory the airframe is simple, but we could easily screw that right up; the huge cost overrun on Nimrod MR4 is related to airframe work and that is a 60 year old airliner design.

The big advantage we have is that Trident 2 is so damn good. It can throw 10 warheads 5500 miles. We only load 3 warheads per missile on average, so we could live with 3/10 of the throw weight. Also, between 1966 and 1999 we had Polaris A4, which has only a 1800 mile range. If we were happy in 1999 with the capacity to only strike targets in European Russia without weeks of advance notice and with toss accuracy - what's changed?

The current warhead design we could reuse. The cost of testing replacements for obsolete parts would fall entirely on us and may need extra facilities (the parts need to function as the rest of the squadron detonate around them, and thus must be seriously hardened against neutron pulses – if only we had a pulsed neutron source….*whistles nonchalantly* ).

So I think, all being well, we could come up with a less good replacement. If the contract went to BAe it would be unaffordable, no doubt, in very careful hands it'll still cost billions and take 10 years work. We've just never built ballistic missiles before. Closest we've ever done was Black Knight in the '60s. That was liquid fuelled, and so not directly transferable.
Anyone who knows defence procurement will tell you that this plan has all the ingredients of what we refer to in the trade as an utter gangfuck.

In case anyone’s wondering, the current plan is to carry out an obsolescence management upgrade of Trident, which will keep a slightly updated version in service until 2046. In all honesty, if we are to maintain a nuke deterrent, this to me is the way forward.

I invite passing rocket scientists (or anyone else who cares) to pitch in their tuppence worth.

Procrastination

2010-03-02T12:56:00.001Z

Go here while I think about blogging. Maybe.

Amused.

Oh and look over here too. (via Obo)

Update. Re. that last link: The amusing Aussie in question seems to have been taken down by The Man. See AJ for details.
This is why I’ve been staying quiet; as soon as I press buttons, things get borked.

The Brown Bully

2010-02-23T17:49:00.001Z

First off, I couldn’t care less how poorly Gordon treats his people. Frankly he could hog-tie and brand them for all I care, so long as his attention was stolen from today’s stint at country-reaming for a few minutes. Those precious moments of distraction would’ve saved us about half a billion, surely.

That all said, I was suspicious (and people have since been all over this) of a supposed bullying victim helpline taking calls in confidence and then revealing the contents of those calls to anyone who’ll listen – including , presumably, the caller’s employer. A quick look at the charities commission does nothing to assuage suspicions:

Hmm, not very active are they? (When they deign to submit accounts, that is). It also transpires that they are run by a company who provide a ‘mediation’ service and that they use callers to the helpline for potential clients. Read this as an alleged example of their work. Not looking like a class outfit, to be honest.
And as I’m writing this, I’ve just read the Grauniad piece on them here.

There are tenuous Tory links to the place as well (their office is next door to a Tory regional office, numerous endorsements, the patronage of Ann Widdecombe etc.), but I care about that much less than the resultant bullshit calls for an “enquiry” from both Cameron and Clegg.
Never mind the parlous state of the country and our perpetual progress down the path to oblivion, it’s far more important to these clowns that they play at playground hair-pulling and pre-election showboating. Christ, no wonder Ding is barely managing to maintain a lead in the polls.
To reiterate a previous topic:
Dave, how do you fuck that up? How?

As highlighted by Obo before, I’ve got to agree with Peter Hitchens’ assessment that it has never been more apparent that Call-Me-Dave is Blair's spiritual successor and that there never be any respite from the grasping mediocrities at the rotten core of parliament as long as the situation is allowed to continue.

I’m growingly tempted by the unthinkable…

Non-News

2010-02-19T18:15:00.002Z

And this is why I’ve been quiet - nothing is happening, and everything is bollocks.
Tiger Woods says he’s sorry for doing something irrelevant to golf to people who purely watch him to, you know, play golf.
Some people think they’ll be able to take JK Rowling for a billion based on the blistering accusation that she wrote a 636 page novel on the back of material gleaned by plagiarising a 36 page pamphlet, which may also have also featured a child wizard in a bathroom.
Lucky citizens were issued some new paperwork today, in order to make sure records are correct and that they are in fact themselves. A nation breathes a sigh of relief.
Increasingly irrelevant idiot talks bollocks and pretends to understand a fucking thing while embarrassed hacks look on. His semi-lucid dribblings were met with approval by the spokesman from a chimp’s tea party next door, right before he tried to eat his own feet.
Communist saboteurs foiled in plot to destroy airline. Apparently their foaming mouthed hatred of profitability was so acute that several of their number had to be restrained from gnawing on the corporate logo in the car park.

Seriously, fuck this.
Do something far more constructive and go here to make sure you’re qualified to use the internet.

Doug Stanhope

2010-02-19T16:08:00.001Z

If you’ve been wondering what I’ve been up to (and my bloated ego likes to think that you have), I have been near constantly distracted. Not that there has been much to distract me from as everything is tedious right now, and I’m trying to wean myself off recycling inflammatory tabloid articles. My intention was from now on to write only if I have something ‘real’ to say….which would explain the hiatus.

Anyway, while watching Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe I have discovered Doug Stanhope –who I’m hoping will find this while ego-googling his name (which he says he does) so I can tell him just how unproductive he has made me. Here’s a clip in case you haven’t had the pleasure:

You can see the rest of the Stanhope-bits from Newswipe here.

I've been listening to his work all week, some of which I've bought and some of which I've grabbed from the ether. For these last I intend to catch up with Doug at some point and personally put the money in his hand or behind the bar because he is the funniest and most brilliantly offensive guy I've heard in an age. Also, politically I've never heard a comic who resonated with me personally as much as this guy.

So this week I was listening to his stage shows while fixing the iPod-chewing neutron polariser (posts passim), and was consequently found flailing about the lab laughing holding a heat gun in one hand and a scalpel in the other, narrowly avoiding seriously harming myself, only to open my hand up on a piece of exposed encoder tape. I was still giggling like a tool, though.
Later I went for a run, as part of my ongoing effort to get my sorry office-bound self back into some kind of shape, and popped out for a 5K’er around the Ridgeway outside work. So off I yomped around the Oxfordshire countryside, Stanhope in my headphones, occasionally alarming passing dog-walkers with random deranged laughter.
It gets dark, I get a bit less sure of my sense of direction, there are trees, I’m pissing myself laughing. I’m listening to this part of his sketch:

I’m intermittently laughing out loud, and totally losing track of where I am in the gloom. The footing is unsure and I stumble down some dirt track or other and end up by the boundaries of UKAEA Harwell. Now this is the only landmark I’m familiar with and visibility is about 4 feet in front of me, so I decide to follow the perimeter in order to find a main road.
Problem is, the track next to the fence is churned up by whatever 4x4 used it last and the recent rainfall has made the footing ludicrous, so I’m clinging to the fence and working my way around. Eventually I manage to get my footing and carry on unsteadily.
Meanwhile Doug gets to his punch line:

"That's what I need - I need a forty four holed, two-headed baby girl. Because that's the only way I can come."

I totally lose it, I slip in the mud, veer off the track, stumble down through the trees and crash, grasping into the fence, laughing all the while – just in time to scare the living fuck out of a patrolling constable on the other side.
Before he gets a chance to compose himself, I squelch off into the wilderness, still tittering.

So the takeaway lesson is: Listen to Doug Stanhope and buy his shit, because he’ll harm you and possibly get you arrested as a terrorist.

Oh and as an aside, the remainder of my home time has been taken up playing Mass Effect 2 on the Xbox. Now for those of you who don’t ‘get’ the whole video game thing, the reason I’m willing to spend 40-odd hours playing a game is for moments like this:

That's entertainment.

The problem with magnets

2010-02-12T14:51:00.001Z

I think I mentioned my issues with magnets and iPods before. Here’s another conversation with Dave on the subject at the time:

Me:

Take a memo-
Don't listen to an iPod whilst elbow deep in Neodymium magnets. The iPod won't thank you.

That is all.

Dave:

Useful advice.

Sellafield has a superconducting cyclotron - worth remembering to leave your wallet in the office and to hang your security pass on the back of the door to its domain, 'cause it lived to erase magnetic strips.

Have you tried your cards?

Me:

Not yet.

Watch is being a bit odd as well. Didn't really think this whole thing through.

Also, working with handtools in the vicinity is a bit of a 'mare. Was trying to do a bit of a frig with some wires, had to resort to using only a scalpel because it had the smallest amount of steel. Messy.

Dave:

Gone off half-assed as usual.

We have titanium tools for magnetic parts. That's where your tax-dollar ends up.

If it's any consolation, going mechanical might not have saved your time-telling technology from being odd. The field from induction furnaces can mess with springs and balance weights in wind-ups and automatics, and make them run at strange speeds.

I've just told a ex-submariner colleague of your travails, and he tells me they were once degaussing their boat on the American's facility at King's Bay in Georgia. Fairly predictably, those boys have a hi-power piece of kit. One of the crew had a stainless plate holding his skull together from an old RTA.

His head became too warm to touch.

Now that’s just cool.

Concerns about the film ‘Wanted’

2010-02-12T14:15:00.001Z

Right, I have several serious posts stacked up, but I cannot work up the enthusiasm to complete. So instead I shall reproduce an email conversation with my mate Dave regarding the Angelina Jolie shooty-action flick, Wanted. If you’ve not seen the film, get the jist over here. Basically ‘The Fraternity’ are a group of preternatural assassins who off people based on the readings of anomalous stitches in an endless tapestry being woven by a big loom in their attic. Yes, really.

Me:

I was giving the whole loom thread-to-name thing a bit of thought and I have certain reservations.

My questions thus far:

What coding system are we using here? At first I’m jumping towards threads>binary>Hex>Ascii characters but then I realised that your 1000 year ago weaver would have limited knowledge of harmonised 20^th century programming standards. Binary they could’ve come up with on their own, and then coded to a base 26 lettering scheme. This would of course leave 6 bit combinations spare in their six-bit system, presumably reserved for non-Latin characters. I’m guessing smileys.
Why did a group of textile workers think that ‘Fate‘ wanted these people dead? Bit of leap wasn’t it? Wouldn’t be the first conclusion I’d jump to unless I was of the ‘God told me from a gravestone to cleanse the streets of Leeds with a hammer’ frame of mind.

Dave:

I have reviewed your comments and find them to be logical. I would note

People have enough trouble with using standard ASCII now, despite it being widely publicised and unequivocally a good idea. I was guessing that at least one of the 6 was the Russian million symbol, which was then derided as "the cancer killing the loom" much as it is now the "cancer killing the internet".
The textile workers were specifically identified as Belgian monks. Said monks used to brew extremely strong beer for consumption during the fast for lent, presumably to numb the continual gnawing pain of partial starvation. The effect of having strong ale as your sole nutrition can be imagined. After 40 days of this, malnutrition, sleep deprivation and general self-abuse, I'd probably be seeing mathematically encoded messages in textiles. However, as you'd say, I'd imagine these to be revelations from the lord rather than a frag order.
How would you deal with multiple names? Like John Smith. Does it give national insurance numbers out as well?

We were also struck by how alike the plot of 'Wanted' and that of "Yellowjacket Greenapple PI" proposed by fashion SWAT was. Obviously they have a loom rather than a Babbage Engine, and not a renegade blimp pilot in sight, but still.

Presumably they also disproportionately assassinated people with short names.
Granted, I may have chosen the wrong story to poke holes in.

As you were.

Haddon-Cave report

2010-02-11T11:55:00.001Z

This has been passed on to me by a former colleague from back in my days working in the defence industry. I recall it being in the news, but I was off jet-setting at the time so have only just got round to reading it.
Haddon-Cave briefly and succinctly tears the MOD, BAe Systems and QinetiQ a new arse, although –as anyone who has encountered the MOD in a professional capacity will tell you- statements like:

"The MOD IPT was sloppy and complacent and outsourced its thinking"

and

"failed to advise its customer properly or ask any intelligent questions"

will come as no surprise whatsoever.

I recommend you take a read and see the nature of those whose task it is to provide life-critical kit to our service men and women.

Haddon_cave_statement - 5 Nov 09 (3)

Magic Money

2010-02-10T19:25:00.001Z

A load of luvvies, lefties and charities have had the inspired idea to magic up $400 billion out of thin air:

A tiny tax on bankers that would give billions to tackle poverty and climate change, here and abroad.

It sounds complicated, but actually it isn’t. A tiny tax on bankers (an average of 0.05% on speculative banking transactions) has the power to raise hundreds of billions every year – giving a vital boost to the NHS, our schools, and the fight against child poverty – as well as tackling poverty and climate change around the world.

Not complicated. Just brilliant.

Now, my knowledge of economics is much like my knowledge of cars: random, inadequate and publically embarrassing.
That said, this is not a new idea, and from what little I know of such things, a FOREX trader that could make a 0.05% profit on every trade would be able to retire very soon. The margins on such trades are already extremely small. If the transaction has a return of less than 0.05%, it will simply not happen and no tax will be taken. See ByrneTofferings for a more informed take on such things.

During the (hilariously polarised) banter on twitter today, it was noted that the likes of HBOS only made about 4 billion at their most profitable, so where the toss do they think this money is going to come from? Surely it would only work if applied to the whole world’s banks? Best of luck with that.
And how exactly does this cash filter down to the ‘poor’, once they’ve robbed from the ‘rich’? It wouldn’t be via the same unionised public sector agencies and charities endorsing the plan, would it?

But no, they say it’s simple and brilliant, so plainly I’m just on the side of the evil bankers and this is just free money waiting to be taken. Must be a lot of spare cash floating around that those careless bankers haven’t noticed. Those big sillies.

I think it was Charlotte Gore (who is plainly blogging prolifically in 140 character bites instead) who made the point (and probably several of the above that I’ve nicked) that if adding 0.05% to broker charges was painless, they'd already be 0.05% more expensive.
No, I’m sure that the luvvies have used their vast collective financial acumen to think all this through thoroughly.

Being a major financial centre is one of the UK’s only remaining global strengths. To continue to demonise and treat the financial sector as some kind of public piggy bank is to invite economic ruin when they eventually decide that they’ve had enough and bugger off somewhere less stupid.

And Bill Nighy can go fuck himself.

Religious double standards (again)

2010-02-08T15:32:00.001Z

Following on from my previous rants on the matter of religious special pleading, we have this chap:

"I see no objection to a young Sikh girl or boy, who's been baptised, being allowed to wear their Kirpan if that's what they want to do," said Sir Mota, who received a knighthood in the 2010 New Year Honours list.

Right. So anyone whose religion (if they have one) doesn’t stipulate the obligatory carrying of a bladed weapon has to abide by the law saying that they can’t (Criminal Justice Act 1988, section 139), but anyone whose chosen superstition does allow said wielding can carry on carrying (Criminal Justice Act 1988, section 139A).
Not that I necessarily agree with the legislation in the first place (it’s not like knife crime is at an all-time low) but surely the fact that someone is a Sikh does not make them intrinsically less of a hazard to other people than the law plainly assumes the rest of us are?

"I accept that, because I think as one realises the increase in crimes of violence involving the use of knives and other offensive weapons, I can see that.

"But there has been no reported case, certainly none that I know of, of a Sikh using a knife in order to cause injury."

Oh, so he reckons ‘Yes’ then. Super.

"It is the right of every young girl and boy to be educated at the school of their choice. For him or her to be refused admission on that sort of ground, as far as I'm concerned, is quite wrong.

I see. It is a ‘Right’ for any child to go anywhere they like, wearing and brandishing whatever the proclivities of their parent’s dogma dictate –regardless of the policies of that school and the societal sensitivities that other children and parents must abide by. To do otherwise would be unfair, is that it?

" I think it's wrong to be discriminated against for that reason."

Far better to discriminate against everyone else (non-Sikhs being 99.4% of the population) by granting special dispensation to your precious little group and their charming pointy trinket –which would be grounds for my arrest if you were to hand to me to carry home for you.
Bollocks. If the handwringers are packing everyone else’s kids in cotton wool, yours will have to leave their ‘article of faith’ at home too.

There have been problems for Sikhs going to tourist attractions," he explained. "Part of it is education.

"We're actually working with the government to introduce a code of practice which would then be used to educate people in the security industry so they are aware of the different articles of faith," Mr Singh told the BBC Asian Network.

It’s not a problem with ‘education’, it’s a problem with you carrying a fucking blade into areas where we’d have problems carrying tweezers.

Yes, society has become more suffocating and nannying.
Yes, all sense of proportion and context has been tossed out the window.
If you want to change that then we shall join you in a call for rationality, just don’t expect us to be sympathetic to your little special-interest opt-out to the restrictions the rest of us have to put up with.

Today’s exercise in amusement

2010-02-08T15:27:00.003Z

Append every statement to work colleagues with “..well, it all looks the same on fire”.

Tally so far: 4 baffled looks, 2 worried glances and 1 theatre-of-all-emotions played out through a mist of spat-out coffee.

My work here is done.

Friday night

2010-02-08T15:27:00.001Z

Urgh. I’ve done the whole ‘left the blog for too many days and am now finding it impossible to write anything’ thing again. It’s a momentum/inertia problem: you have to keep it going or it’s creaky as hell to start back up. So, here’s a quick post on the weekend’s bloggy meet-up to grease the skids:

So, as some of you already know, some fellow bloggers and I met up on Friday for some drinks and a chin-wag. I’d encountered a couple of people before, but mainly I was meeting people for the first time. If you’ve never had the interspaz/meatspace interface before: Yes, putting a face and a voice to a profile name and an avatar is more than a bit surreal.

I concede that I speak incredibly fast. It was suggested by AJ that there was a verbal resemblance to Malcolm Tucker. Mum will be so proud when I tell her.

Conversation centred around the various facets and idiosyncrasies of blogging/twittering and was surely impenetrable to anyone listening in who is not of our ‘kind’. Needless to say if you weren’t there we probably talked about you; little gossiping bitches that we are.

It was for the most part a great night out, although there was apparently (as I found out via phone on the train home) a bit of an altercation between a couple of our merry crew after we had all bomb-bursted out into the night. Was a bit random, as we’d all been getting on famously ‘till then. But, as was suggested to me later, someone probably wasn’t calibrated for wine. An unfortunate way to round the night off.
Ah well, was good to see everyone anyway.

Might be best to choose a venue with a bit less tweed and a bit more sawdust next time though…

The law doesn’t count if you believe in fairies.

2010-02-04T10:49:00.002Z

So this guy gets into an altercation with another guy in a bank queue, things get heated and he punches him in the face and leaves. The chap whose been belted follows him outside to remonstrate, whereupon Punchy decks him, breaking his jaw. It’s all caught on the bank’s CCTV and they catch him later by way of his car registration plate. It goes to court and he pleads guilty. Open and shut.
But no, Cherie Booth -for it is she- is presiding and there are other considerations:

Ms Booth told Miah that violence had to be taken seriously, but said she would suspend his prison sentence because he was a religious person and had not been in trouble before.
'You caused a mild fracture to the jaw of a member of the public standing in a queue at Lloyds Bank.You are a religious man and you know this is not acceptable behaviour.'

I’m not a religious man, and I know it’s not acceptable behaviour. Do you know why that is? Because you don’t need the babblings of bronze age savages to tell right from wrong. Because whatever superstitions you may cling to make exactly no difference to what is legal and what is not. Besides, if he was more aware it was unacceptable behaviour due to some assumed sense of enlightened moral consciousness due to his religiosity –which appears to be her suggestion-, doesn’t that make the transgression worse?
To quote from the NSS:

Now, what would have happened if he had been an atheist? Would Mrs Blair/Booth have refused to suspend the sentence on the grounds that non-believers have no guiding principles that tell them that smashing people in the face for no good reason is not the right thing to do?

Gee, I wonder. As ever, the best analysis is by way of the 'Mash:

"But Mr Bin Laden at least believes most of the same things that I believe and knows that an all-powerful creator is watching over us, preventing wars and natural disasters with his all-embracing love and making sure complete maniacs aren't appointed to the bench in what is supposed to be a civilised country."

Update. JackofKent has suggested that the 'sphere is making too much of this. See his comment here.