Dizzy Thinks

Diane Abbott and stupid people......

2012-01-07T06:08:00.003Z

Well Happy New Year to you all, it's been a while hasn't it? I've been busy though you see, and will be busy this week too as I sod off to the proverbial Land of the Free for a week for work. However, I just thought I would pop up and pass comment on the multitude of comment around Diane Abbott and her rather unfortunate choice of generalisations.

For started, and to deal with those who will scream about "fake outrage", I wasn't offended by Abbott's generalisation one bit. To be offended by the ignorance and stupidity of ignorant and stupid people take for too much effort. It's much better to simply point and laugh at their ignorance and stupidity.

There is however a wider intellectual point at play though, and it's one that I've blogged about on many occasions over the past few years, and that is the inherent contradiction and inevitbaly consequence of politics based on identity.

You see, if you're modus operandi is, as Abbott's has been for years, to promote difference and diversity over discrimination and prejudice, through the use of positive affirmation and ideological positioning that views history in some sort of Hegelian master/slave, be it in race, or as it used to be class.

It's not difficult to see that positive discrimination is a paradox that will produce the sort topsyturvey idiocy we've seen this week, where vehement anti-racists make comments that they themselves would leap on has pure evil if directed in the reverse, and, consequentially we witness people who are proudly non-racist attempting to justify comments that ordinarily they wouldn't want too.

This has led to some rather amusing, if not completely retarded comment from some, such this joyous and argument from Stephen Baxter at the New Statesman who says anyonne complaining qabout Abbot is faking offense (see above) and most hilariously this,

"If it had been the other way around," is the general thrust of these arguments. Well if it had been the other way around, it would have been the other way around. If it had been the other way around, everything would have had to have been the other way around. We would have to be living in a country where black people dominated and white people didn't; where black people had all the jobs but spectacularly untalented black columnists would be writing about how unfair it was, somehow.

Baxter has got some great priase for this little argument which is essentially using historical contextualisation to justify making generalisations about white people. One tiny problem with this though is, as pointed out to Baxter is the logical conclusion it implies.

You see, if the world was reversed as he is arguing, then he's also arguing that if someone from a particular ethnicity livers in a society where they are not the dominant ethnicity then they would be justified in making negative comments about the dominant race and it would be OK.

Come to think of it, that is yet another perfect example of why the politics of identity is so contradictory. For here we have someone who is anti-racist arguing that racism is OK depending on the historical contextualisation of the person making the comment or acting in a particular way.

In fact, and this is where it gets even more silly. If you're one of the historically downtrodden you are entitled use the history of your ancestors experience to justify your opinions towards the dominant group in the present who are, by association alone, barred from complaining because their ancestors were not nice to someone else's ancestors.

That's the sort of retarded lunacy that causes wars to start isn't it?

Stop saying "flaming" is "trolling"

2011-11-06T07:30:00.009Z

Recently, a piece was posted on the New Statesman website about the abuse bloggers face in their comments. Specifically though this was about the abuse female bloggers face in their comments. You see, being told that you deserve to die or be raped is, apparently, an area that is reserved solely for females.

Now, having been online since the 1992 I personally take issue with that assertion. Death threats, rape threats, vicious violent threats are not, in my experience, reserved for any one particular gender at all. I've been threatened with all manner of nasty ends from being anally raped to within an inch of my life, to being burned at the stake (amusingly enough when that happened I was trolling myself and posting provocative neo-Marxist arguments on a a message board full of rednecks).

Anyways, mentioning burning here is rather apt, as responding like that is called "flaming" when it happens, yet it seems now that the Observer has taken up the cause have decided that it's actually trolling, they note

The frequency of the violent online invective – or "trolling" – levelled at female commentators and columnists is now causing some of the best known names in journalism to hesitate before publishing their opinions.

Now, I must apologise here for being pedantic, but telling someone online that you hope they "DIE, DIE, DIE. I HOPE YOU BURN IN HELL!" or "I HOPE YOU GET RAPED......... TWICE!" is not trolling. OK?

It's an easy mistake to make if you think the word "troll" refers to ugly creatures that live under bridges. However, what it actually refers to is a form of fishing where where you cast a line into the water baited with lure, a spinner perhaps, and you drag it along hoping to catch a fish stupid enough to bite.

It is a subtle art where you post to a forum, a message board, a newsgroup, a blog, with the distinct purpose of making that community bite back at you. Your target is not the writer alone but in fact everyone that reads your words.

A good troll is one where the community bite and have no idea they've been had (see "oh how I envy American students" for details, a troll that kept getting responses for a year); a bad troll is when it's blatantly obvious the words are designed to cause trouble (posting a derogatory comment about Mohammad to an Islamic forum for example) and that is called flaming. See here for the legendary Ultimate Flame.

If you're born in August you're screwed... allegedly

2011-11-01T06:53:00.003Z

There's a great little piece in today's Daily Mail about a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) that has found "August born children" are disadvantaged at school by being the youngest in the Academic year. Apparently,

August-born boys are 12 per cent less likely than September-born boys to get good GCSEs and girls are nine per cent less likely.

In addition, August-born youngsters are 20 per cent more likely to ditch academic study and learn a trade from the age of 16. They are 20 per cent less likely to go to an elite university.

And it is not just their education that suffers as they are more likely to be bullied at primary school and have lower confidence in their academic ability.

As a result as teenagers, they are also more inclined to smoke, binge drink and take cannabis and fewer are in control of their lives.

Oh dear, am I alone in feeling that perhaps this an effect desperately seeking out a cause?

Lord knows how this sort of thing works for those kids who, by virtue of things like "rising fives" find themselves in the year above the year they should be in in school. They're probably on the scrapheap right? Well, except for say a certain lady I know who is a research scientist at Cancer Research and has appeared on the Today programme, but was always the "youngest in the year".

Right wing former minister in links to other right wingers SHOCKER!

2011-10-16T07:33:00.004+01:00

There's a real gem in this morning's sunday tabloid the Observer. In an effort to stretch out the story about Liam Fox resigning - he should've gone over a week ago really - they've done an investigative piece that has discovered that the Pope is Catholic and bears do indeed shit in the woods.

David Cameron has been accused of allowing a secret rightwing agenda to flourish at the heart of the Conservative party, as fallout from the resignation of Liam Fox exposed its close links with a US network of lobbyists, climate change deniers and defence hawks.

Noooo really? Liam Fox, the dfence secretary knew defence? Never! I don't believe it! You jest surely? You'll be telling me next that the Health Secretary Andrew Lansley knows doctors!

In a sign that Fox's decision to fall on his sword will not mark the end of the furore engulfing the Tories, both Liberal Democrat and Labour politicians stepped up their demands for the prime minister to explain why several senior members of his cabinet were involved in an Anglo-American organisation apparently at odds with his party's environmental commitments and pledge to defend free healthcare.

Hang on a minute, are you saying that some people in the Tory Party disagree with David Cameron and have been chatting with others who disagree with him? OMFG! Really? Seriously? God I wish the Labour or the Lib Dems were the sole party of power, they've never ever had a disagreement on policy ever. Shining examplesof unity are they!

An Observer investigation reveals that many of those who sat on the Anglo-American charity's board and its executive council, or were employed on its staff, were lobbyists or lawyers with connections to the defence industry and energy interests. Others included powerful businessmen with defence investments and representatives of the gambling industry.

Oh yes, the new puritanism has arrived, filthy fornicating gamblers in Atlantic City. Can someone, anyone, pleases explain to me (a) why its wrong that people on a board of a voluntary organisation have errr jobs? and (b) where the Observer investigation was about the links between Gordon Brown's Smith Institute and Fidel Castro? What you didn't know there was a link? Trust me, with the degrees of separation rules at play in the Observer's piece I bet I could find one.

Don't get me wrong here, Liam Fox was right to resign, but seriously, the Observer "investigation" is so pants it's not even worthy of the Sunday Mirror. They've exposed the square root of 1/5 of nothing and simply screamed that Liam Fox knew some people they don't like and therefore by association there is some sort of dark shadowy Illuminati at play here, illustrated brilliantly by Lib Dem peer Lord Oakeshot who said "Dr Fox is a spider at the centre of a tangled neocon web."

Pass the tinfoil.

How I laughed.....

2011-10-14T07:52:00.000+01:00

Total Eclipse of the Heart - Literal Video Version by BalloDaSballo

Committed genocide? Come to Britain and get away with it

2011-10-09T07:57:00.003+01:00

Quality extract in the Mail on Sunday from Phil Woolas's diary when he was Labour Immigration Minister

June 28
Back to Rwanda. We have four people wanted for genocide in Rwanda (there are 100 but the four are the test case). The magistrates had agreed to extradite them but the High Court had disagreed on the grounds that they would not get a fair trial in Rwanda.

I am advised that I should grant six months leave to remain in the UK ‘in the hope that the legal system in Rwanda improves’.

I had asked why we couldn’t try them in The Hague and was told as they were not British, I couldn’t send them there!

So a person accused of committing genocide in an ‘unsafe country’ (which country that has genocide is safe!) simply has to get into an ECHR country and they will get away with it. The ECHR is providing cover for people who commit genocide. Madness.

The mind boggles at that one.

Riots: Quote of the Day

2011-08-09T16:12:00.003+01:00

From the Telegraph and Daily Mail

Looters formed an orderly queue outside JD Sports.

Only in Britain huh?

Amy Winehouse - posts from the past

2011-07-24T09:17:00.005+01:00

I think Amy Winehouse's record sales are about to go through the roof given her untimely death due to overdose. Anyhow, here's some posts from the past.

Before Heroin - 9th April 2007

Sticking with the music theme of the last post, I;ve just seen Channel 4 News run a piece about Amy Winehouse and whether she should be up for the Mercury Music Prize or not because she's a smackhead.

It's worth noting how bloody good the critically acclaimed 2003 album Frank actually was and who she was before she became a household name because she likes to chase the dragon. This is "Fuck me Pumps", and I'm sure we all know the type of girls she's singing about, not to mention the mild irony given what's happened to her.

YouTube is still being slow, give it a chance.

Anyway, I'm not sure whether "Back to Black" will win the Mercury Prize tonight, but comparing this girl to Coldplay (as Nich Starling did last week) is way of the mark musically and lyrically. Shame about the smack.

Quick Saturday Observation - 25th August 2007 (horribly prescient)

The UK's own Janis Joplin in waiting?

N.B. Personally I think her first album is infinitely better than Rehab.

Today probably marks the birth of music legend. Whether she deserves to be one or not will be a matter of personal taste.

Perspective

2011-07-19T07:59:00.011+01:00

Prime Minister: Tony Blair
Allegation: Accused of modifying government policy relating to tobacco advertising in sports in return for a donation of £1 million to his political party
Truth Status: Not proven - opinions on truth dependent on personal prejudices. Donation eventually returned (although modified policy remained in force)
What Opponents Said: Resign
Political Status: Survived and won following two elections.

Prime Minister: Tony Blair
Allegation: Along with his Director of Commmunication accused of lying to Parliament by embelishing and "sexing up" the case for the Iraq War. Presure intensified by the sudden, mysterious death of whistleblower leading to multiple inquiries and conspiracy theories.
Truth Status: Not proven - opinions on truth dependent on personal prejudices.
What Opponents Said: Resign
Political Status: Survived and won following election.

Prime Minister: Tony Blair
Allegation: That peerages and knighthoods were offered and exchanged for loans and donations to the Labour Party. Staff in Downing Street including the Prime Minister questioned by Police.
Truth Status: Not proven - opinions on truth dependent on personal prejudices.
What Opponents Said: Resign
Political Status: Survived

Prime Minister: David Cameron
Allegation: That he previously employed someone who has since resigned, who may have - as yet to be proven but alleged by a whistle-blower who has suddenly died - acted criminally prior to his employment; and to have met with multiple times on both personal and business terms (in keeping with his two predecessors), the Chief Executive of a newspaper business.
Truth Status: What exactly is the allegation? Opinion will depend on personal prejudices.
What Opponents Said: Resign
Political Status: To Be Confirmed (oddly)

Update: First example courtesy of Alan in the comments.

Election by September?

2011-07-12T07:49:00.005+01:00

Sometimes you just happen to be in the right place at the right time to overhear something and then you have to make a quick judgement about what you hear and who said it. This morning is such an occasion so I offer the following health warning:

** This post is rampant speculation based on things heard and observed **

OK, that said, I got on my train this morning into London and sat on a bank of six chairs where three men were already sitting. They were chatting in a manner that suggested they knew each other quite well and possibly worked together. The discussion was audible but in hush tones.

It was evident quite quickly that the topic of discussion was News International. One of the men, who I'm sure I recognised from the press room at a Tory conference said,

"The only reason Rebekah is still there is because she knows where all the bodies are buried"

At this point, having referred to someone by first name only there was a look from one of the three to the man who uttered the words, and then the same man did that thing you do with your eyes to indicate something elsewhere... in this case... me. In other words it was a "shut the fuck up" with his eyes.

So anyway, the journey continues and the bloke that did the eyes starts to read his Metro. In the front page, top corner of today;s Metro is a box that says something along the lines of "Sun and Sunday Times now pulled into scandal". The "eyes guy" points to it and nudges the one who referred to "Rebekah" by first name and the following was said,

Yeah. They'll be an election in two months when the rest comes out.

Now, as I said at the beginning, this post carries a health warning. The only reason I posted it was because of the way in which someone was indicated to shut up because I was sitting there.

Make of it what you will.

Note: For those interested in reading other posts by me, I am now a contributer over at Dale & Co.

This is a gay club for gay people...we'll have no straight ones here

2011-06-26T07:08:00.009+01:00

Let's play a little game shall we. Imagine, if you will that you're a Tory councillor and you went out one night to a nightclub to see someone perform. Imagine to that you were standing in the queue waiting patiently to pass the bouncers and get through the door.

Whilst in the queue you noticed that they were quite a few gay couples queuing too, so, you get out your mobile phone, you fire up Twitter and you tell your 6000 or so followers that,

Resent the number of gay people in the nightclub queue. If you want to see [insert performers name] BUGGER OFF SOMEWHERE ELSE.

What do you think the screaming Left would be saying on Twitter? It wouldn't be long before you'd probably be "under pressure" from Leftie bloggers to quit. "Evidence!" they would scream of the vicious evil hatred of equality and sexuality differences.

OK, game over, now let's shoot back into reality just a few hours ago to see what a Labour councillor and former NUS President said last night.

Now..... personally I don't really have a problem with the comment in terms of its content and point.* What I do have a problem with is the inherent hypocrisy that exists within the comment given who is making it. You see, it illustrates wonderfully everything that is wrong with identity-based politics.

If you're going to go down the route of championing the rights and equal treatments of social groups, whether it be based on gender, who you have sex with, or skin colour, then you really ought to be consistent.

For example, if you're going to champion women and fight against sexism, then being sexist towards men isn't really going to put your argument on the moral high ground. Likewise, if you've been listed as one of the "50 most powerful gay people in British politics" it's probably not a good idea to start slagging off straight people.

I doubt of course that such hypocritical dickheadness will result in any newspapers article calling for this particular councillor (also tipped as a future Cabinet minister) to resign or apologise for being heterophobic - mainly because there is no such thing as heterophobia just as it not possible for a white person to experience racism.

* UPDATE: Just so it's clear here, I don't think Wes Streeting should be apologising for being "nasty" to straight people because I do actually understand his sentiment. The issue is (a) what would be his reaction if you reversed the words and a Tory councillor said them, and (b) the act of doublethink required on Wes Streeting's part to make such a comment in the first place.

Blogging has been light and will remain so...

2011-06-08T08:11:00.004+01:00

Apologies for the lack of posts, the new role I mentioned a couple of months ago has now started in earnest so blogging is now taking very much a back seat whilst I get to grip with all sorts of Amazon cloudy type things.

However, if you're really bored and want some amusement I strongly advise reading the recent woes of Tim Ireland over at Bloggerheads and his battle with the Times Higher Education Supplement who seemingly decided to use the name "Bloggerheads" for a column or something.

It really chuckled me when I read it on the train the other day. Back in a month or so probably.

Will SamCam catch the "Dreamscape Flight" home?

2011-05-30T06:34:00.014+01:00

You have to love a bit of mindless churnalism from the mainstream media, right? Especially when they fail to spot a rather obvious joke and then palm it off as something that is true. So here's something to make you chuckle - well maybe.

On Saturday, Guido Fawkes posted that,

the PM was on a crack-of-dawn flight to Ibiza this morning. He paid for premium boarding. Sam flew out yesterday, again on Easyjet taking the baby but leaving the rest of the kids at home. She also took Friday’s Easyjet 3043 which leaves Stansted at 6 a.m. and is know[sic] as the “Sunrise flight” in tribute to the legendary rave organisation.

On Sunday, the Daily Mail wrote up that,

The Prime Minister flew out on the 6am easyJet flight 3043 from Stansted – known as the ‘Sunrise flight’ in tribute to the legendary rave organisation which organised all-night dance music parties in the countryside of southern England during the late Eighties.

Whilst the Daily Telegraph noted that,

This time the Camerons are understood to have taken Easyjet's 6am departures from Stansted - known as the "Sunrise flight" in tribute to the raves of the 1990s.

At some point you would've thought they might have done their research on that little "tribute" and realised that it's a reference to event promoters, the PR officer of which was one Paul Staines aka errrr Guido Fawkes.

You might have thought the hacks would've also noticed that Sunrise stopped in 1993, two years before Easyjet were even formed, and 6 years before they started flying to Ibiza. Or maybe, just maybe they would've checked the flights to Ibiza and spotted the lack of choice about flying times?

It's either 6am (landing around 10am local time) or nearer 10pm (landing around 2am local time) - a no-brainer on which is preferable especially when you have baby in tow.

Yes indeed, apparently the "Fourth Estate" genuinely believes an early morning flight to Ibiza in 2011, on a route that first appeared in 1999, is nicknamed after one of very many many raves that went on a decade earlier that just so happens to have had a PR officer who was also the source of the claim of the "tribute" nickname.

Anyone with a half a brain ought to have spotted the rave reference was a piss-take, so I believe the appropriate words in the contemporary Interweb lexicon are "epic fail".

Incidentally, should any hacks be reading this, the late night flight to Ibiza is named the "Dreamscape Flight" in tribute to a place where ecstasy chomping ravers fall asleep whilst listening to music at 200 bpm.... honestly.

Dear Prime Minister... you're talking bollocks

2011-05-28T06:49:00.003+01:00

I see our dearly beloved Prime Minister has made a passionate defence over the International Development aid budget. This was after the Daily Mail woke up to an argument the some made even before the Coalition was formed that you cannot credibly call for austerity at home and talk about tough times whilst simultaneously ring-fencing and increasing how much money you piss away to foreign countries in aid.

Now naturally, the knee-jerk reaction to making this sort of argument is that you are in some way "callous". One of the other thing you hear is that we're a rich country and so should do it. To that I say bullshit. We're not a rich country, what we are is in fact a country that has less debt that countries we're giving money we don't have away too. If you're operating in the red and giving away money to others in the red then you're not rich at all, you're just skint and shuffling credit around.

The fact is, there is nothing callous about reeling in aid spending whilst you get yourself back on your feet. As I said back in March 2010, if Cameron or whoever stood up and said "you know what, we're in a bit of strife ourselves at the moment, and we really can't afford to do this right now" everyone in the country of the non-tribal idiot persuasion would, I imagine, nod and say "fair enough". After all, if you had £1000 and you're total bill were £1000 you;re not going to say "I think I'll give £100 to charity".

It is not callous, it is not uncaring, it is simply deferral until you're have a sound footing to start doing it again.

We've heard a lot about cuts in the last years. Some of it has been true, some of it hasn't. The thing is it doesn't matter either way, if people think their losing something at home whilst pumping money we don;t have abroad to the same cut value they're not going to be up in arms of outrage if politicians say "actually we;re going to server you, not those for the moment".

David Cameron's obsession with detoxifying the Tory-brand is blinding his judgement. If he just took a moment to lead instead of following what he thinks would be the outcome he would, I think, find that much of the country would follow him and respect him.

It's a very simple question with an even simpler one word answer. Do you give money to charity when you have none? You'll be hard pressed to find anyone who says yes I think. Sadly though I don't think Cameron is strong enough to take that view. He likes to talk the talk about making "tough decisions" when it comes to his own country, but doesn't have the balls to do it when it comes to others.

Now before anyone does predictably call me callous and uncaring I say this. I'm not saying that foreign aid should be scrapped. What I'm saying is that we should only be spending on it when we can actually afford to do so, and not at the expense of whatever spending can be achieved at home. Get the finances and house in order first, then come back to the issue later.

Through the human rights looking glass

2011-05-28T06:16:00.002+01:00

Morning all, I've been rather busy this week tying up loose ends and projects before starting the new role I mentioned a few weeks ago (long notice period you see). Anyhow, I have but one question this morning and it can be summed up in just three letter.

W.... T.... F?

So..I heard about this potential story the other day and thought much the same but never really thought it would end as it has. I, rather naively you might think, thought common sense might prevail.

I am of course talking about the news that a man who was convicted of burglary and dangerous driving resulting in an eight month prison sentence has been released after a month after winning an Appeal Court claim on the grounds that sending him to prison breached his human right to family life as he was the sole carer of his kids.

I must admit I;m still having a bit of trouble computing this, and hopefully more coffee will help. Apparently the affect of Daddy going to jail on the kids is now more important than the justice or victims of his offences. Now.. I don;t know about you, but I would've thought seeing Daddy going to jail for doing something wrong might actually be an important lesson to the kids of what happens when you break the law, but apparently not.

You might also be asking "errr where's the mother?"... she's not dead or anything. The five kids have been staying with her at the weekends for the last month and at the burglars sister's during the week. Apparently though that wasn't good enough better to free the guy huh?

Now here we have, once again, the irritating reality of the "human rights" agenda, but also we have a brilliant illustration of the problem of determining rights on the basis of holding the quality of "human" rather than the quality of "being a citizen of civil society".

You see, if you think about it, "human" rights, as defined in the Human Rights Act and the ECHR are ultimately flawed because they often sit in opposition with one another. On the one hand a burglar can have the "right to a family life" (Article 8) but it is in opposition to Article 5 relating to prison for committing crimes.

Worse still though, Article 8(1) which this burglar has used is even held in opposition to Article 8(2)

1: Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.

2: There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

So sending him to prison for the "prevention of disorder or crime.... for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others" is allowed... or is not in this case.

It's becoming increasingly clear that the ECHR, written against the backdrop of 20th Century horrors is now becoming a rather silly document. The problem though is that its politically difficult to withdraw from it (and replace it with something else) however sound the course of action might seem. This is mainly because if you withdraw from "human rights" you're instantly a pariah and clearly in favour of torture.

We're not going to Hell in a handcart, we got there years ago and it's become so normal no one seems to notice anymore. What I don't understand is why so many of the other signatories to the ECHR don't have the problems we do.

EXCLUSIVE: Why Mr Speaker took the risk about the name being said

2011-05-23T16:03:00.004+01:00

Why did this happen? Football revenge, plain and simple. Can't you see? It was a set-up!

Dr Who's Fleshy Dopplegangers are REAL!!!!

Comparison shot via here.

"Football star" screwed by his lawyers

2011-05-22T08:26:00.002+01:00

Jesus wept. If I were a famous footballer with an injunction to stop people publishing my name in relation to an affair I would hope that my lawyers would not be foolish enough to advise me to sue Twitter Inc but it seems some lawyers are as been well reported.

Of course, the lawsuit will mean money for them whether they win or lose, so it's in their interests, yet, perversely it seems to me me at least those are the only interests they're really serving, and they're certainly not serving their client to the standard he has served his team-mates with the ball over the year.

As TechCrunch noted quite astutely about suing Twitter Inc in the Washington Post,

Oh yes. They [the lawyers] are going there.

You see, the clue is in the "Inc". Twitter is not, as most will know, a business based in the UK but is actually based in the US.

That is significant for one major reason. The "football star" has just made a two-bit story about himself global, and attacked a business in a nation where freedom of the press and speech is enshrined into the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

We're talking about a nation where the "press" has been defined (Lovell v. City of Griffin as "every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion" (that would cover Twitter Inc), and also where for written words to be libel they must be false (New York Times v. Sullivan).

It is now just a matter of time I would've thought before the footballer is being named widely as suing Twitter Inc in US media - at which his injunction will become utterly worthless. And let's be fair, do he and his lawyers really believe they can overturn the First Amendment?

Seriously, the "football star" is either a complete idiot who believes he can win (possibly), or he's a complete idiot that has been convinced by a bunch of lawyers that he can win against a US entity with no UK presence.

Of course, there might be an argument to be made that Twitter Inc is being sued in a UK court which means the US Constitutional arguments are irrelevant. But even if they are, what happens if they were to win against Twitter Inc? Can a business based in San Francisco be compelled to pay damages? Unlikely.

All that is going to happen is his name will be plastered across media that UK courts have no control over. The exact opposite of what he wants. Even if the UK courts come down on his side he loses - and all because he didn't like people talking about him in what is essentially a cacophony of noise akin to a busy pub on a Friday night.

Note: Comment moderation is on. Everyone knows his name but posting it in the comments won't get through.

EXCLUSIVE: Government and Opposition agree on less than two years for rape

2011-05-19T06:18:00.018+01:00

So, let's get this straight. The Coalition and Ken Clarke have put a document out for consultation (also known as "floating a policy for a reaction first" and a classic Labour trick) which includes changes to the American concept of plea bargaining introduced by Labour, where you get less of a sentence if you put your hands up straight away the minute you get nicked for an offence you are guilty of.

Clarke et al would like to offer a 50% reduction in a sentence across the board from crime if you plead guilty. Not in my opinion a very good idea personally, but then I don't agree with plea bargaining at all unless we increase the statutory prison terms by the same amount the we intend to reduce the sentence by, but that is neither here or there.

As a result of Clarke's proposals, and massively commented upon in the media, this could, technically speaking, lead to someone being given the statutory 5 years for rape (not common see footnote), getting a 50% reduction to 2.5 years, then if they're good, being let out on licence with a further 50% reduction at 15 months.

Shocking isn't it? Just 15 months for rape. The wishy washy liberal bastards are soft on crime, not like those hardened realists in Labour and women's groups (because men never get raped don't you know) who are rightly outraged by this disgusting move, is it any wonder a Labour MP said Ken Clarke "supports rapists" yesterday on Radio 4?

No, those hard-nosed Labour types are "tough on crime". They think that rapists should server a further 5 months then be let back out on the street to terrorise their victims.

That, I'm afraid, is the reality of this synthetically outraged argument dripping with moral indignation.

As it stands you see, if one applies the uncommon and technically possible logic of the morally outraged horde, you currently could get 5 years, have a third taken off for pleading guilty early, so that's a 20 month reduction leaving 40 months to serve, then, if you keep your nose clean (assuming you've not been beaten to death inside) you could be out in 20 months on licence.

Dizzy Reality Check:

Headline in proposed world: LESS THAN TWO YEARS FOR RAPE!
Headline in current world: LESS THAN TWO YEARS FOR RAPE!

Yes that's right kids, the idiots of political policy and political commentary are arguing over five months, where the end result in both cases, if we apply the theoretical possibility of what could happen, is that rapists serve less than two years before they're out on licence.

If you were ever unsure of spotting fake and intellectually fatuous outrage, then look no further than this bunch of disingenuous childish pricks trying to point score over the relative merits of two near identical and thoroughly weak positions.

Footnote: Whilst 5 years is the starting point, the average sentence is actually 8 years, and the sentencing guildelines make clear the different levels of seriousness within an offence. It seems obvious to me that if we have 50% plea bargain reduction we should double the starting point for a sentence anyway, but that's just me.

Update: Please note that I am not particularly interested in the "gaffe" element of Ken Clarke's comments yesterday. That was, I think, merely a classic example of mangled a valid point. The more substantive issue is that all sides are arguing about a theoretical sentence that is pretty much the same.

For Vera Baird and Ed Miliband to pretend that they're outraged by 15 months when they support, by virtue of having introduced a theoretical 20 months for rape, is nothing short of lunacy and a brilliant example of what is wrong with politics.

The first millisecond.....

2011-05-18T10:14:00.003+01:00

Apparently this is what the first millisecond after a nuclear explosion looks like.

From Wikipedia via Reddit.

Tory MP supports paedophiles... no wait... what?

2011-05-18T09:50:00.006+01:00

Did you know that Nadine Dorries believes all children suffering sexual abuse from paedophiles are to blame themselves for it and in effect deserve it because they didn't say no? That might come as a shock to you but its what some are saying about Nadine Dorries - the replacement for Hazel Blears in the "Marmite MP" stakes.

There's even a petition calling for her to reisgn as she must clearly support paedophiles given that she thinks children that are abused would not be abused if they just said no to their pervy Uncles.

Anyhow, back in the world of objective reality where the absurdity of straw man politics is highlighted for the retarded thinking to which it belongs, let's take a look at what was actually said compared to what many think was implied by what was said. On television recently, Nadine Dorries said:

"If a stronger ‘just say no’ message was given to children in school then there might be an impact on sex abuse … if we imbued this message in school we’d probably have less sex abuse."

Now I'd say there are two ways of interpretting the meaning of what was said. On the one hand, if you are, for example a college lecturer in further education, you might say:

These comments amount to shameful victim blaming and have no place in modern politics. There is no grey area in sexual assault - a child cannot give informed consent and to suggest that a child giving consent in someway causes the assault is deeply offensive to the victims of these assaults.

The other option of course is to notice the bold highlighting in the Nadine quote that says "might" and "probably" and, instead of jerking the knee upwards ask the question, why "might" it do such a thing? What argument "might" there be that "might" see one thing have an effect on the other?

Let's think about that for a minute. When it comes to sexual abuse of children, which is horrific, wrong and morally evil, one of the key factors you often hear about in anecdotal reporting is that the abuser will often exploit the sexual ignorance of the abused. We all know the drill and have seen it portrayed in documentaries and other media all too often.

The abuser says things like "this is our secret", "this is a game" etc. In doing so they exploit the victims ignorance about what is and is not appropriate behaviour. So what "might" the consequence be if children were taught about "abstinence" in relation to sexual activity, which, in effect is the same as teaching them that certain parts of their body's should be, and are, off limits to others?

Might there not be an unintended consequence that children - unfettered by sexual ignorance - would no longer be as easily exploitable by those who seek to do such things because there would be a greater awareness that certain behaviours are simply not on?

Of course, it wouldn't stop or have an impact where things like fear and violence are used, but "might" it have impact on the level of sexual abuse, or at least an impact on the discovery and prosecution of sexual abuse?

We often hear about how the trauma to a child alone is terrible enough, but we also hear about children who have been abused believing what is happening to them is "normal".

Education therefore "might" have an impact. Not because the child might say "no" and it won't happen, but rather because abusers will no longer be able to rely on the ignorance that the victims have about the appropriateness the actions they're being forced to do.

Then again, perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps Nadine Dorries MP, mother of two, really is a vicious Tory bitch who thinks sexual abuse victims deserves all they get because they don't say "no". Mind you, I think I'd have to smoke an immense amount of crack to come to that conclusion.

Note: I expect that because I know Nadine Dorries there will be those of paranoid nature that will dismiss this post on the grounds that I must be writing it after taking orders from her. Such claims are of course bollocks. The post exists because I find it quaint that child abuse has become a political football and rationality has been thrown out of the window.

I should also add that I don't believe in God, don't go to Church, and have no issues with teenagers shagging like bunny rabbits. I also don't have any issue with telling kids to try not to shag like bunny rabbits either though.

NHS IT could have worked... maybe

2011-05-18T08:51:00.002+01:00

After so many years the National Audit Office has finally said what so many already knew about the National Programme for IT in the NHS and the so-called "electronic care record". It's rubbish, a big waste of money and unlikely it can ever achieve what it originally set out to do. In the NAO's words,

"This is yet another example of a department fundamentally underestimating the scale and complexity of a major IT-enabled change programme. The Department of Health needs to admit that it is now in damage-limitation mode."

Now I can't argue with that, the system as proposed was a monster, and whilst it's design may have appeared simple i.e. central database with medical records that every NHS front-line service can access and update, where they've failed is realising that the programme was akin to painting the Forth Bridge. Even if they'd had infinite money and infinite resource by the time they'd have finished the system would be out of date with technology.

The thing is, it could have been so good, it could've even worked if they'd realised not just the scale, but also acknowledged a flaw in their starting assumptions. You see, in principle, the idea of being able to live in London but walk into a hospital in Manchester and that hospital have access to your medical records is not, per se, a bad one. Actually, from the point of view of pure efficiency its a no-brainer how handy such access would be. However, ask yourself this question.... how often would it really be needed?

If you take a pause for thought before getting excited by the wonderful national brilliance of an integrated national system, just think for a moment about how often people really move around great distance when it comes to healthcare. Many people stay in the same town all their lives and may move house but are still in the same geographical areas covered by the same PCT (or whatever the area healthcare coordinator is called at any given time). There will of course be people that get treate3d at different hospitals because of certain conditions, but they are the exception rather than the norm. For the most part people stay local.

This is where the Blair Government got it wrong. This is also where the proposed architectural solution went off the rails. You see, if you assume everyone is constantly moving around then the appeal of a centralised record system sounds more and more like the solution. Never mind the difficultly in migrating already existing data from a multitude of different systems, once you get the idea in your head of the need for a big national system to solve a problem that is not really there you're not going to stop and think about it anymore, you'll just go ahead, and that is exactly what they did.

So how Dizzy, you may be asking, could it have worked you smartarse? Well, without wishing to use too many political clichés, if they'd gone for a bottom-up approach instead of a top-down, and thought about acting locally to affect nationally, rather than acting nationally to affect locally, they could have made the system work. If they'd acknowledged that the "moving patient" was an exception but not the norm, then the scale of the "national" infrastructure would and could have been minuscule, and the amount of investment at a local level with the divergent systems could have been reduced too, here's how.

There are only a few key pieces of information you really need in national infrastructure to make this work, and none of them actually include personal medical records. Everyone treated on the NHS has an NHS ID number, so you need that. Of course, not everyone knows their number without digging out the card, so you need some data to cross-reference it, i.e. a name, DOB and perhaps an address. Finally, you need to know where they're being treated, in other words, the system needs to be able to know where their records are being stored locally. There could be multiple locations but it simply needs to know.

At a local level, what you would have would be whatever system the local level wanted to use, which would, inevitably, also contain the same core information about a patient i.e. NHS number, name, address, DOB, but it would also contain the medical records for that patient. Now, however that system might look, what would need to be developed at the local level is a means of exporting that data to a single file format, and that single file for each customer, which would contain human readable information like pdfs etc rather than information held in a database schema, could be stored in a separate local system that the national system.

So, the situation would occur thus. You are treated at your local doctors and local hospital etc. Each night the local system updates its nationally connected system with a single data file contain everything mapped to an NHS ID. Around the same time the national system queries all these locally held but nationally connected systems and asks the question "do you have any new NHS IDs I don't know about?". If the answer is "yes" the national system updates the "where are the records for NHS ID X stored with the new location?".

The result would be a system where, if a new patient appeared, you could query the national infrastructure like a telephone directory. Rather than asking for the record, you ask where the records are, and you go off and get them yourself. Now, don't get me wrong, this system is not infallible, it is by no way perfect either. What's more you will have to find way to avoid having repeating data.

The point is, instead of having a centralised database with all the information on it and having to go through a lengthy migration by which time the system you've built is not fit for purpose, what you instead have is a system that is decoupled and local, but has the scope to provide information and talk nationally on the odd occasion that it necessary by making the "national" but be a type of middle-ware lookup-layer. The real beauty of this approach is it fits well with an agile type framework and gradual roll-out. You would be able to deliver workable solution rapidly with pilots, and introducing new local systems would not require intensive and massive data migration work for which the resource cost would be huge.

Of course, none of this is going to happen so I'm not sure why I wasted my time writing it :-)

Quotey quote......

2011-05-17T11:38:00.001+01:00

The Wirral News Via email

The Code

2011-05-16T12:48:00.006+01:00

According to Sky News Newsdesk on Twitter,

Coded warning issued of Irish Republican dissident bomb in Central London.

Now, here's something that always bothered, baffled and befuddled me.

What's the code? Who decides the code? How does the code get delivered to the people that need to know the code? Is there some sort of honourable back-channel communications between MI5 and the IRA/Splinter groups where they decide that if someone uses the word "orange" at the same time as saying there's a bomb then it's genuine?

I understand, I think, why the warnings are coded. It is so you can filter out the hoax call from the real thing. As I say though, that means at some level, somewhere, there is a gentlemanly chat where each side decides on what the code should be doesn't it?

I don't expect an answer from anyone on this. It just always makes me chuckle when I imagine terrorists and spooks agreeing on certain words to ensure the latters threats are considered credible.

Update: Just found this.

The procedure for organising codes has been long established. Codes alter periodically by agreement between the Provisionals and the security forces, both sides knowing that a failure in communications could be catastrophic. The IRA pass on a chosen name to the Gardai in Dublin, who in turn give it to the RUC Special Branch in Belfast. From there it is disseminated to forces on the mainland. Liaison is also held with a number of news organisations.

In Northern Ireland, however, the complication is that the IRA are not the only bombers. Because of the number of factions, up to six code-names could be in use at a given time.

None of the paramilitaries who wants to establish a bomb code is turned away.

I wonder if you can apply online in this modern world?

Nadine/Bloggerheads - the saga continues/ends

2011-05-14T10:42:00.007+01:00

Via Nadine Dorries' blog,

Today I had a meeting with Bedfordshire Police. They informed me that under caution and recorded on tape at Guldford[sic] Police station, Tim Ireland, of bloggerheads, has been issued with a warning under section two of the harassment act.

For those wishing to read further here is Tim Ireland's response which I shall not quote due to its length nor summarise lest I be accused of manipulating it in some way or falsely interpreting it to deceive you. You are free to read it and make your own judgement.

Note: Comment moderation is on. Any comments relating to judgement of what has been written may not be approved as I do not wish to being engaged any further in dodgy allegations of smearing/misrepresentation/deception call it what you will. I'm also out for the rest of the day so may not approve anything until tomorrow.

The Kelly Conspiracy... again

2011-05-14T08:00:00.000+01:00

Oh Lordy, here we go again with the "David Kelly" conspiracy. The Mail has a story todfay titled Mystery of the helicopter that landed at scene of Dr Kelly's death after his body was found.

Yes that's right people, we are now in the world of the "black helicopter", which makes me wonder if Paul Dacre has a secret hideout in the Mid-West stocked with water rations and guns ready for when the New World Order strikes.

It seems rather clear that yes, there are some odd questions about evidence and happening on the day Kelly died, but the one question I rarely see being asked is, if he was murdered by some shadowy conspiracy then what was the motive?

Seriously, I don't doubt that intelligence services the world over don't engage in a little "wet work" from time to time, but they've usually got a reason for it (note: not a justification but a reason for the decision to order a hit), and I just can't see one here.

Kelly had said some things to Andrew Gilligan. What he said has been poured over extensively and it didn't bring the Government down. Instead of asking the "ten questions" of mysterious things as the Mail and others do about events on the day etc and assuming a darker meaning, they ought to be searching for what a motive might be first, lest you end up in la-la land.

Huhne's slopey shoulders

2011-05-10T09:50:00.003+01:00

Having just got back to the UK after a break, I was amused to see that the Lib Dems are getting all cocky and go in for the "slopey shoulders" approach to policy they helped formulate in many ways. Thus I come to the rather odd banner image on Chris Huhne's website which has this picture of him.
Now, can somebody, anybody tell me what in the name of all that is Holy is going on with his shoulders or lack there of?

Oil, interests, Iraq and reality

2011-04-19T08:31:00.002+01:00

Firstly, thank you for all the warm wishes in my new venture, it's going to be an exciting ride.

Now, as I told you last week I will sporadically still post and today is such a day as I've just read the Independent's Secret memos expose link between oil firms and invasion of Iraq, which, as you'd expect has caused a little bit of screeching from the appeaser of brutal dictators on the Left with the expected "see we told you Iraq was about oil!"

There is however a rather simple response to that which is "so what?". When we look at the details of the story it seems that BP spoke to people in the UK Government before the invasion of Iraq. They noted that under the current "oil for food" deal in place at the time with Iraq, the French company TotalFinaElf stood to become the world single biggest oil supplier should the contract stay in place in a post-Saddam world and that wasn't in BP (or for that matter Shell's) business interests, and that oil contracts post-Saddam should be sliced up a bit.

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Is it really shocking or even wrong that a business should lobby Government about something that is of interest to their business because of a potential imbalance in the global market in which they operate? I'd say not.

Likewise, is it really shocking or wrong that post-Saddam, global oil producers would be going in and spending oodles of their own money to extract the black gold out of the ground so that we could all buy it given that we're so dependent on oil we needed it? Errrr yet another resounding no methinks.

Way back before the invasion of Iraq I can remember seeing a most salient point online by someone I knew on the "war for oil" line. It went along the lines of "why not have a war for oil when you also get rid of a brutal bastard who is controlling the stuff? It's win win surely?". He was right, it was a win win situation.

On the one hand you displaced a dictator who whether he had weapons or not wanted them and was a right git to the populace over which he controlled; and on the other you removed his control over massive oil reserves and stopped one single company dominating the oil market.

"What about the million who died?" will of course be the response to that. To which the easy answer is "that figure is a made up extrapolation" and secondly "would you have preferred to just leave the guy in place to kill people?" Of course, you won't win an argument about Iraq with anyone who was, is and remain anti the action. The argument will shift slowly along whilst they miss the odd nature of their position that means they were happy to allow Hussein to remain in place.

The thing is,what seems to be lost on so many is that politics internationally will always involve interests as well as other things. Humanitarian missions will always include those interests, and if they are no interests for a country then the humanitarian aspect is, however much it sucks, not enough alone to act. That's why there has been no invasion of Zimbabwe. If someone discovered masses of oil reserves there then you know what, it would be different. That is realism and that is how the world works now and pretty much always has.

As long as there is Government and/or nations, and as long as there are businesses and traders that work with that Government and/or nations, then it will remain the case that despots will be overthrown depending on what they've got. Wars are not fought over principle they're fought over resources, be it coal and steel between France and Germany, or simple straight forward territorial expansion and the resources that brings.

Yes, it's very easy to sit back and say "surely we can all get along and have a group hug and not do this?", but such views are little more than displays of naive ignorance towards human nature in the current geopolitical reality in which we live.

I imagine for some this will be a highly controversial and immoral view to have, but you know what, it's real life and don;t expect it to change. Hell, even if little green men came down from the stars and said "you're not alone in the Universe" we might unite globally but we'd still just expand the arena in which such realistic views exist so nations would be replaced by planets, a new and, dare I say it, final frontier (*pukes*) would open up and we'd carry on doing it again.

Ironically I'm not much different to the lefties who say "see it was all about oil, but we knew that already", the only difference is that I don't actually see what wrong with that per se. Yes, the unintended consequences after the fact may turn out to be regrettable and undesirable, but the judgment itself to act within your interests isn't inherently wrong, immoral or unethical, it's just realistic.

It is of course easy to sit on the sidelines and scream with moral righteousness thanks to 20/20 hindsight and philosophically flawed world views about production and capital. Things change though when you're the one making the decision and reality is laid out for you.

This is not the end but it is a new beginning

2011-04-13T07:42:00.007+01:00

Since this blog started in January 2006 I have had two Golden Rules. The first was that I don't do "Stat Porn" because measuring one's manhood publicly is exceptionally sad. There has been the odd time where I have alluded to hit rate when pushed by someone in comments suggesting that no one reads the site, but largely I have maintained Rule No1... well... until now.

Over the last five years this site has exceeded my wildest dreams in terms of page impressions and unique visitors and has achieved an average hit (not visitor) rate of just over 1 million per year. Not bad for a geek that just sits online all day I think.... but you may disagree.

Anyhow, you're probably wondering what Rule No.2 is - or not depending on whether you hate me with a passion although if that is the case I would say "why the fuck are you still reading this?" but that's just me. Rule No.2 is simple, never, under any circumstance, do an "I'm leaving" post because (a) you probably won't stick to it, and (b) when you don't stick to it some smartarse will say "I thought you were leaving?"

So this is not an "I'm leaving" post, but it is "Things are changing so don't be expecting many updates other than at the weekend perhaps, if I can be arsed" post.

As regular readers may remember, I recently alluded to a reorganisation and round of redundancies of over 500 at my employer. I've not been laid off, but what that did do for I and Mrs Dizzy (who works for the same company and has survived to reorg too) was bring into sharp focus our exposure to risk in the sense of having all our proverbial eggs in one basket.

So I took it upon myself to find a new role and mitigate that risk. Thus it is after over a decade working in telecommunication and IP service provision I have taken a jump and will in a few weeks time be starting a new professional adventure in the gaming industry doing cool new things inside Amazon's AWS cloud (note: I am not going to work for Amazon, rather I will be using their facilities in the "Infrastructure as a Service" world).

The point is I'm going to be really busy again and that is something I revel in, especially when I'm going to be involved in high-scaling system often with in excess of 5 million concurrent users, so blogging is taking a back seat, but its the very back seat in 7 seater Vauxhall Zafira if that makes sense.

As I say, this is not the end. I will still be posting sporadically, I will also be writing for another project in the pipeline - under my name rather than Dizzy - about whatever I fancy, but the eight posts per day days are well and truly over.

Thanks to everyone who has bookmarked me over the last five years, and thanks to Mrs Dizzy for being the most beautiful and strongest woman in the world. You are my rock babe!

Phil

How to form a political argument on the NHS

2011-04-11T09:07:00.003+01:00

Back by unpopular demand, another in the "How Politics Works" flowchart series. This time to help you, whatever your political persuasion, form th correct argument for the media when discussing the NHS because of a news story about it. As you will learn, there are only ever three positions to take.

Click The Image For Readable Version

How to insult someone whilst supporting them?

2011-04-08T07:11:00.004+01:00

I had to chuckle when I read this (my highlighting).

Early day motion 1719
PUBLIC ATTITUDE TOWARDS PEOPLE OF SHORT STATURE

That this House notes the continual lack of acceptance within all sections of society for those of short stature; notes that approximately one in 25,000 births to parents of average height is a baby of restricted growth; further notes that because of unfair stereotyping and the stigma associated with the disability, children and adults with restricted growth conditions and their families face thoughtless discrimination from the media, the wider public and some professionals and misplaced jokes and ridicule, including within this very House, which only serves to fuel ignorance about the condition; further notes the important work of the Restricted Growth Association, Short Stature Scotland and the Dwarf Sports Association UK in offering friendship and dedicated support and advice, and promoting public awareness of this widely misunderstood growth condition; and calls on those within the media, medical profession and in public life to challenge the stereotypes associated with restricted growth.

Translation: "You shouldn't take the piss out of short people, by the way, did I mention that Bercow was a shortarse?"

Nick "I'm a lazy bastard" Clegg

2011-04-04T10:59:00.004+01:00

Oh dear, it would appear that Nick Clegg's means of ensuring work life balance by refusing to do any new work after 3pm has had an unitended consequences. From Hansard, Friday,

Mr Sanders: To ask the Deputy Prime Minister (1) when he plans to reply to the letter from the hon. Member for Torbay of 6 December 2010 on work placement pay;

(2) when he plans to reply to the letter from the hon. Member for Torbay of 18 August 2010 on behalf of his constituent Mr Russell James on reform of the public sector;

(3) when he plans to reply to the letter from the hon. Member for Torbay of 22 July 2010 on behalf of his constituent Mr Keith Richardson on intrusive and unnecessary laws;

(4) when he plans to reply to the letter from the hon. Member for Torbay of 15 June 2010 on behalf of his constituent Mr Christopher Bunker on intrusive and unnecessary laws;

(5) when he plans to reply to the letter from the hon. Member for Torbay of 15 June 2010 on behalf of his constituent Jenny Hall on the Protection of Freedoms Bill;

(6) when he plans to reply to the letter from the hon. Member for Torbay of 16 July 2010 on behalf of his constituent Mr David Love on the statutory requirement for schools to hold acts of daily collective worship.

The Deputy Prime Minister: I answered my hon. Friend's correspondence today.

I do believe the words "lazy bastard" may be apt at this point. What's more, Sanders is one his own MPs too.

Tom Watson does irony

2011-03-31T10:14:00.003+01:00

From the graffiti board, Tom Watson MP (for it is he) has posted.

That this House notes with serious concern the Chancellor of the Exchequer's decision to purchase a new red dispatch box for this year's Budget at a cost of 4,300; believes the Chancellor of the Exchequer could have procured a cheaper alternative to the elaborate box he has chosen; and calls on the Government to give greater consideration to the amount it chooses to spend on similar items in future years.

He has a point, but is wasting £600 on tabling an EDM really the best use of taxpayers money either?

I do love it when MP's waste our money complaining about other MP's wasting money.

Blogging about blogging.....

2011-03-31T08:03:00.003+01:00

For the sixth time in six years I moved offices this week. Hence lack of posting. May post something later, although don't be holding your breath or anything.

The Gove is and is not for turning?

2011-03-29T08:26:00.003+01:00

I'm slightly confused this morning - as is normal - after hearing the Government had apparently done a "U-Turn" on the Educational ~~Bribery~~ Maintenance Allowance. The confusion is because, as I recall it, when they announced the scrapping of EMA they said it would be replaced by a more targeted scheme and yesterday they announced the more targeted scheme.

How is that a U-Turn?

Incidentally, and purely as an anecdote that would no doubt be dismissed by some, I know a student who was absolutely gutted that his EMA was being taken away. The reason he was gutted was because it meant he would no longer be able to keep up the repayment for the 52inch plasma screen that EMA was funding.

Oh, if you're wondering they're studying "public services". The irony of using public money to cover the cost of a personal luxury was not lost on them either.

Lefties, property and the definition of "violence"

2011-03-27T08:04:00.001+01:00

The morning after the night before huh? Seems it kicked off royally in some parts of London as self-proclaimed "anarchists" went on the rampage annoyed that the Government wants to cut the size of the state. It's a bit like a group of anorexics going on the rampage in protest because there has been a marked increase in low-calorie food available in the shops.

Anyway, putting aside this utterly ridiculous situation of anarchists demanding more Government, there appears to be another rather odd idea doing the round for some lefties, that being that what happened yesterday was "vandalism" not "violence".

The trade unionist/parliamentary bag carrier and author of "Chavs - The Demonisation of the Working Class", Owen Jones, was busy yesterday on Twitter saying,

The media et al need to learn to distinguish between "vandalism" and "violence". You can disapprove of vandalism, but it's not violence[1]..... Violence is people getting hurt. Vandalism is property being damaged. They're totally different.[2]

Now I've no doubt that this sort of intellectual light-footedness goes down very well in seminars and lofty debates in Universities, but let's be serous for a second. Violence is the act of exerting physical force for the purpose of damaging something, be that be a person or an inanimate object. So, running at HSBC bank with a large metal bar and smashing the windows in is a violent act.

In fact, the only reason that one might try to play the little word game about it not being violent is if one wanted to use some sort of ideological political argument to justify the action or somehow excuse it, which we see in the second comment that tries to draw a distinction between people and property.

Property is theft and/or something immoral clearly. Therefore any act against it is somehow politically at least, excusable. However, I bet, if you went into the home of one of these "property is theft" type people and started using all the toothbrushes they'd be quick to scream about how it was their toothbrush, likewise if you took their iPhone they'd be very upset about their phone being taken.... no doubt that will be a different type of property though.

March For The Forces of Conservatism #march26

2011-03-26T07:30:00.008Z

Today a small minority of people, many of whom pay little tax, will converge on London to demand more money earned by those not present be spent on them, with added call for more money we don;t have to be borrowed and spent on them.

Of course, if you listen to some of the hype coming from those involved in organising "March For The Alternative" you might be fooled into thinking this is a mass popular revolt against the Government, such is the nature of politics and rhetoric that defies reality.

Currently, according to the organisers, the prediction is that there will be 100,000 people marching. On their website they have a pledge total for those that will march which is, at the time of writing, at 8,105. Let's be fair to them for a moment and take the TUC claim of 100,000 marchers on face value and ponder on what this represents.

According to Ed Miliband yesterday (who will be speaking to marchers at Hyde Park (assuming they all make it there and don't split up to cause any havoc)), the march is "the voices of the mainstream majority" making themselves heard. Mainstream majority?.... Really?

Let's see now, there are 650 constituencies, varying in size, but if we split the predicted 100,000 people across them evenly, that represents (give or take) around 154 people from each constituency on the march. That's pretty much a local political party membership with a few Union members thrown in.

Now, the TUC have anticipated that they will be dismissed as a minority and so have a commissioned a "poll" to "prove" otherwise. So, six days ago, 2,720 people (that's approximately 0.0045% of the entire population) who were active enough to sign up to do YouGov online polls at 50p per time answered some questions.

Once these were answered, a bit of extrapolation was done, a bit of maths here and there. Some assumptions about what the rest of the adult population probably, maybe, who knows but we can guess, think; and then the conclusion was drawn that 52% of all people agree with the march, and 48% of all people either disagree or don't really care. Thus Brendan Barber can say,

"I'm sure that many of our critics will try to write us off today as a minority, vested interest. This poll nails that lie."

*puts hand up* Please sir, please, please!? Can I just call bullshit first please? The "poll" does no such thing and anybody thinking it represents some sort of scientific truth is a gibbering idiot.

Don't get me wrong here, it might really be that if you actually asked every single person over the age of 18 in the country that the result would be the same. However, claiming that the poll nails a lie is in itself a lie because it doesn't.

The reality is that a small number of mostly politically active people will be marching today. The rest of the country will be watching the football, doing the weekly shopping and going about their daily life largely oblivious to it all, thinking about how on Monday they have to go back to work and earn money that is taxed once with NI, taxed again with income tax, then taxed again with VAT when we buy things, taxed again with fuel duty, tobacco duty, alcohol duty etc.

They'll be doing this whilst lamenting the lazy hypocritical bastards sitting on their fat arses who demand a job but never seem to take one and find it easier to complain about "bloody Eastern Europeans stealing all the work".

And here's the inherent irony of the March For The Alternative. It is a march by politically active people on the Left who are anti-racist, anti-discrimination, pro-multiculturalism and the like; and the "alternative" they're asking for is one where individual responsibility is stripped from everyone and the Government "keeps" you, with an unintended consequence that necessitates the use of migrant workers thereby perpetuating the very discrimination and racist views they're so against in principle.

The March For the Alternative is not about an alternative at all. It is about reactionary conservatism to change and the maintenance of the status quo. A status quo that ensures people are enslaved to and trapped by the state when they do not work freely. It is about conserving the client state built over the past decade that sees Government spending peoples money, not people spending their own money, as the only solution to all problems.

It is a March for the Forces of Conservatism not an alternative. It is about producer interests, not peoples interests, and many of those marching are little more than proverbial useful idiots helping those who are opposed to change and individual responsibility maintain their power-base.

Let's be under no illusion, the exploiters of the worker are not business or the Coalition, its the Union heads who talk the talk of socialism whilst quaffing on champagne and earning salaries their members can only dream of.

Take the NHS as a case in a point. It is not the service provision of health care free at the point of the use that is important to them. It is the conserving of the structure in which they have power that matters. They will tell you it is about stopping profit being a driving force in health care. What they won't tell you is that even if someone makes a profit you will still get the treatment you need with no bill presented to you at the end. Instead they'll have a march.

Rousseau noted that the great princess, when told the peasants had no bread, responded with "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche". Brendan Barber and his colleagues say "let them carry placards".

Note: Let's not forget too that the "cuts" are not really cuts at all.

The Will's and Kate Commemorative Fridge?

2011-03-25T12:02:00.005Z

I'm not quite sure which is more sad, that MSNBC's Today has a microsite dedicated to the Royal Wedding called The Windsor Knot, or the commemorative fridge from a General Electric design competition they've written an article about.
Beyond parody.

Dear Leader....

2011-03-25T10:34:00.002Z

Via imgur.com

Yet another EDM about crap....

2011-03-25T09:57:00.002Z

Quite literally about crap actually.

That this House notes the findings of Redway and Fawdar at the European Tissue Symposium in 2009 that demonstrates the ineffectiveness of warm air dryers and jet air dryers in reducing levels of bacteria on the skin; further notes that both methods of hand drying produce a mean increase in bacteria and that, for users of colostomy bags for whom sanitation is a paramount concern, the bacteria present through blow air drying methods are particularly hazardous when changing colostomy bags; welcomes the fact that certain major retailers are installing paper towels in all disabled toilet facilities; and urges the Government to make the installation of paper towels in a disabled toilet facilities a legal requirement to safeguard the health and safety of colostomy bag users.

Laws on paper towels.... real issues-based politics at work that.

Pole Dancing for Jesus

2011-03-25T09:52:00.001Z

Words fail me.

Parliamentary ICT: The Great Naming Scheme Debate

2011-03-25T06:45:00.007Z

Anyone who works in technology in the field of administration - be they NetAdmins (always the cause of failure), DBAdmins (always the cause of failure when it is not the NetAdmins fault), or SysAdmins (never the cause of failure because they're Gods unlike the other two) - will be aware of the timeless and eternally important question of "what should be the naming scheme for our devices?"

Now, you may not understand the importance of this. You may be thinking "surely making things work is more important than the name Mr Diz?", but you'd be wrong. As any thoroughbred geek knows, what you call things, and the scheme it follows is without a doubt the most hotly disputed and important issue in technology today.

Why? Well.. if you get your naming scheme wrong, you might end up with lots of devices with utterly stupid names. What;s more you might pick something cool as a scheme that sadly has a finite number of options.Say for example your naming scheme is based on illegal substances allowing you the ability to say things like "I'm working on acid today". There are only so many drugs you see, so eventually saying "I'm on cocaine6 at the moment" doesn't have the same effect really does it?

Celestial objects are often popular, the only problem there though is, as I learned once, any celestial object that tends to fall to earth, such a "meteor" tends to jinx the device so it then has a habit of going down all the time - especially if you're rolling out a version 13 of code onto it (sensible geeks avoid such versions and skip the number to 14 just in case... tempting fate and all that).

Of course, the naming scheme debate can be settled quickly if you want to be all prim and proper and highly professional. In that case you go for the old $location-$function format of name. When the former is an abbreviation of the device location or datacentre, and the latter is something like "mail" or "web"... that is boring though and well... just not cool.

So why am I telling you all this? Simple really. It looks like the IT geeks in Parliament have had this eternally important debate recently too, and "being cool" won the day over "being professional".

Click for Larger Version
Seems they've gone for famous mathematicians/Cambridge alumni or someone is making a subtle political statement by using a traditional Tamil name.

Either way, having a cool naming scheme beat the stuffy suits huh?

Don't I know your name?

2011-03-24T08:01:00.005Z

I see Labour were on their toes quick yesterday putting out a press release slating - naturally - the Budget. Of mild amusement is the issue of the help for first-time buyers. Labour's press release (posted in full here) cites only one third party source, which is a comment by the Chief Executive of the charity Shelter, Campbell Robb, who said,

Today’s announcement will help less than one per cent of people struggling to get on the housing ladder, leaving them more likely to win the lottery than be helped through this small-scale scheme.

Now, is this the same Campbell Robb who headed up the Social Exclusion Taskforce for Blair in the Cabinet office, and was also appointed by the former Prime Minister to be the head of the Office for the Third Sector (in the Cabinet Office), reporting to the Minister for the third sector, one Mr E Miliband?

Roll up! Roll up! Get your "independent" anti-Coalition quotes here!

Fair Fuel Price Fixing

2011-03-23T13:33:00.005Z

Was a little busy, hence the lack of live blogging, but I did listen to the Budget. So the headline is going to be that fuel duty is cut by 1 penny from 6pm tonight and a fair fuel ~~price fix~~ stabiliser will be introduced.

Naturally, the Tory MP wannabe party arselicker line will be that it's effectively a 5p per litre saving on Labour's plan. This does of course require a suspension of reality on the viewers part by thinking that an unimplemented rise equals a saving of the same amount to the people that are paying.

No doubt such intellectually illiterate idiots would fall for a supermarket saying it had decided not to rise the price of milk from 50p to £1 with advertising of "Save 50p on a pint of milk".

Anyway, I digress. So George Osborne has canceled the automatic fuel escalator that puts a penny on a litre above inflation each year. Well, canceled at least until the price of oil starts to go down again at which point, if it stays low, the escalator will be reintroduced.

Sounds like price control to me.... all very Thatcherite huh?

How about a fuel duty rebate policy for business?

2011-03-23T06:30:00.002Z

Fuel duty, now their a bitch. Personally, in an ideal world, I would see it slashed massively, but I have to be realistic right, so here's a thought for what really ought to happen, and it's not so much a stabiliser as a means of altering the relationship that Government and the Treasury assumes with those it fleeces.

The relationship I'm talking about for the Treasury is one that is perfectly explained in Yes Minister with the comment that,

"The Treasury does not work out what it needs and then think how to raise the money. It pitches for as much as it can get away with and then thinks how to spend it."

Never a truer word spoken, and fuel duty is a place where it ought to change. You see, the Treasury knows, roughly speaking, how much petrol is consumed each year based on its tax receipts, and when those prices rise it inevitably gets a lot more than it was expecting.

Now it's difficult to see how you could introduce a mean of only getting the amount you set out for at the beginning of the year in fuel tax from the ordinary consumer, as the ordinary consumer may not have a personal relationship with the Treasury in terms of tax, but a business does.

A business can already claim the VAT back on fuel, so the Treasury knows how much fuel business buys, and it also knows how much tax it gets from business for that fuel. So here's an idea, how about deciding each year, based on what is known, how much the Treasury wants from fuel tax, and then, after VAT returns have been submitted, doing a bit of maths and rebating that which has been paid above and beyond the desired figure for the year?

Now I imagine some would critcise such an idea noting things like inflation, and economic changes etc. The thing is, those things effect the current situation as well. However, I return back to the Yes Minister quote. Shouldn't the Treasury be deciding how much it wants and, where possible, seek to get that, rather than taking over and above what it actually requires?

I;d love to see something for ordinary consumers, but the truth is, haulage and commerce is being crippled by fuel prices. Deciding how much you want and then rebating those business will have a positive effect on their ability to trade and thereby grow.

Now... feel free to shoot me down in flames and call me a retard if you must in the comments.

Some (pre)Budget thoughts

2011-03-23T06:06:00.003Z

The devil will be in the detail. Do not think that just because Brown et al have gone that the reality and critique of that Osborne announces today won't unravel in the next few days and cause much more debate.
Don't expect the immediate abolition of National Insurance and its merging with Income Tax. A consultation and an aspiration is far more likely, after all, if he did it, tomorrows headlines would be "base rate income tax rises to X%". an NI and Income Tax merger can't be done overnight and would require a lengthy public discourse to soften the feeling that people were paying more than the already are.
Heavily trailed already this morning is the rise in the tax-free threshold at the bottom calling it a tax cut. Don't be fooled to much. With inflation running at above 4%, and the likelihood of pay freezes in the private sector, any gain will be swallowed up by the time the change actually comes in.
Fuel duty is more than likely going to remain static and will be billed as "helping" motorists. It is, naturally, bullshit to claim that not implementing a rise on an already overtaxed product whose price is rising constantly because of external factors is an example of the Government doing us a favour (more on what ought to happen with fuel tax in the next post).
Finally we have the "big surprise rabbit out of the hat"... not sure what that might be but it could be that there is no surprise to make him distinguish himself as a politician that cares about the economy and not political positioning, handily positioning himself in the process!

Will try to live blog later, work permitting.

Pierce Watch.....

2011-03-22T08:10:00.002Z

At least the cut and pasting has stopped.

March 14th Dizzy Thinks - Ed Miliband's climate change, petrol price flip flop
March 21st Andrew Pierce - Daily Mail

Tax is taxing... but let's not bullshit about the rates

2011-03-21T07:50:00.007Z

If George Osborne really does decide to merge NI and Income Tax so as to make understanding personal taxation simpler then on the face of it it's pretty decent idea. After all, as Guido noted yesterday, no one believes that the Government taking a percentage of gross earnings is anything other than a tax.

However, there is something else that we need to watch out for in the argument, and that is the claim that when you chuck NI and Income tax together, the real starting rate of tax is 32%. What's more higher rate taxpayers are really paying 52% of their earnings in tax... however, this is actually and entirely misleading.

You see, we have, irritatingly, a progressive tax system. That means you pay NI on the gross before tax. Then you pay Income Tax on the taxable amount, which is the gross less the free 7Kish. Then you pay one rate on the next 20 odd thousand. If you go up into the 40% rate you only pay it on the amount you are in it by.

In other words, if you earn £1 over the threshold you would pay 40p to the taxman on that £1. Horribly confusing I know.

Anyway, the bottom line here is that not even someone earning £150,000 per year pays 52% of their income in taxes. In fact, someone on £150K (the 50% tax rate) will pay a combined amount of NI and Income Tax to the tune of £58,900, that 39% of their earnings in tax. Someone on £50K (the so-called 40% higher rate) will pay £13,910 in NI and tax, that's 27% in total.

Now don't get me wrong, I still think that is way too much. However, trying to win the argument for lower taxes on the basis of exploiting the confusing nature of a "progressive" system to make it sound much worse than it is is the wrong argument to be making because you'll be called on it.

A much sounder platform to be on is to make the case that the tax system is so utterly confusing that tax rates should be flatter, instead of this crap where you pay a percentage on the gross, then you get a pay one rate on one part, and another rate on another part, less your free part.

Note: It's not hard to find up to date salary calculators online that show you exactly what the breakdown of earnings and deductions is.

UPDATE: One thing I forgot. It is lie on the part of Lib Dems to say that they;re taking low earners out of tax altogether because the low earners still have to pay NI on the gross income. If you mereg the two into income tax only then there will be a massive loss that would need to be offset by the rest of us earning above the tax-free threshold to maintain the claim that no one on low earnings paid tax.

Oh look... it's all the West's fault.... again

2011-03-20T06:56:00.002Z

I see, as previously predicted there has been an interesting reaction to the Libya/UN Resolution thing from the lefties over at Stop The War.

Prior to action happening Stop The War was saying there must be no action, that everything that was happening was all the fault of the West anyway, and that the best thing to do was use words to show solidarity with those trying to overthrow their dictator, but, crucially, we must let people with crap guns and old weaponry "settle accounts with their own rulers" (own rulers who have bigger guns, planes and what not).

Now that a UN Resolution has been passed, Stop The War, unable to call any action "illegal" are saying its a big stitch up by the West and other Arab despots to dominate Libya and seize control of its oil for BP and BAE, and, apparently, generic tomahawk missiles are now "weapons of mass destruction".

Of course, none of this should really be a surprise. For groups like Stop The War, it doesn't matter what happens as it will always result in a Noam Chomsky-esque argument that points out "the West" is merely doing whatever it is doing in order to dominate and enslave and is lacking in any moral credibility.

Incidentally, and as an aside, I understand that when the UN Resolution passed, the Libyan rebels were elated and started firing their guns into the sky along with artillery etc.

Now..... can someone please explain to me the logic involved where you're fighting against superior weaponry, superior numbers etc and when you get a bit of good news the first thing you do is waste lots of ammunition by trying to shoot the moon?

Is there a qualifying age for Bridge?

2011-03-17T09:29:00.002Z

Welcome to the All-Party Parliamentary Bridge Group, who;s purpose is

To develop an awareness of the benefits of bridge (particularly for young people and for senior citizens) and to promote enjoyment of the game, and bridge events, with the legislatures of other countries.

20 members. 2 MPs, 18 Peers. Youngest member 51. Oldest member 88. Average age, 70.

Something tells me that promoting Bridge amongst the young is not going to be as successful as promoting it amongst pensioners.

Damien McBride - legal fees

2011-03-17T07:57:00.002Z

Now here's an odd response from Francis Maude.

Mr Nuttall: To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office with reference to the answer to the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood of 12 October 2009, Official Report, column 409W, on public relations, whether any funds from the public purse were spent on legal fees in relation to the incident involving Mr Damian McBride, the Red Rag website and associated emails.

Mr Maude [holding answer 14 March 2011]: This Government are not accountable for the decisions and actions of the previous Government.

Now, the reason I say it's odd is because if the answer is zero then why not just say it, and if the answer is not zero, then why not just say how much it was so' to have a pop at Labour?

Ed Miliband's climate change, petrol price flip flop

2011-03-14T15:05:00.006Z

So errrr..... in Government, Ed Miliband was the Secretary of State in the Climate Change department. In July 2009, he told Andrew Marr that we should all accept higher fuel bills in order to nudge us into saving the planet, driving electric cars etc etc.

Today he has formally come out for lower fuel prices and is going to force a vote to stop his own party's VAT rise.

Presumably this is because he either (a) didn't really give a crap about the planet back when he was for rises, or (b) thinks it's an easy bit of opposition opportunism to be against what he was for before becoming for again, or (c) both.

July 2012 - you can't go south of the river

2011-03-14T11:09:00.005Z

There is a joke in London that taxi driver don't go "south of the river", well, come the Olympics, no one in a car is going to be going south of the river, not if you take a look at the maps on the Olympic Route Network.

There will no longer be the opportunity to come down the M11 and go through Blackwall - as I have to regularly. No, you;ll have to go via the Woolwich Ferry (although that is designated as an "alternative route" should there be other problems so you may, as an ordinary citizen be banned from that way too).

That leaves you with Dartford, which, is utterly congested at the best of times and will be absolute utter chaos during the Olympics.

Still.. it's only two weeks right? Errr no. This seems to suggest that the so-called "Olympic Route Network" will operate from July 2012 to September 2012 (two months).

Joy! Gridlocked areas being redirected to gridlocked areas.

Not to worry though, if you're one of the Games partners, i.e McDonald's executives, then you will have the freedom of routes.

Anti-Saloon League reject Government 'responsibility deal' on alcohol

2011-03-14T09:14:00.006Z

Last week, the subject of tobacco came up with the inevitable "the Government needs to protect people from dying" argument (which conveniently missed the reality that we all die eventually). In opposition there was, of course, those who think such desires to hide cigarettes from view and put everything in plain packaging will just increase the illict trade in tobacco from that bloke in the pub who just got back from abroad.

This week, we have that other vice, the dreaded booze. You see, a number of 'charities', including Alcohol Concern (also known as the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and a fake charity), the Royal College of Physicians and the British Liver Trust, have got together (to be known as collectively as the Anti-Saloon League) and rejected the Government's "responsibility deal" on alcohol saying it is not tough enough.

Now, did you know that in just under eight years time, it will be the 100th Anniversary of the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution which was eventually repealed some 24 years later by the 21st Amendment.... just saying.

Death TV and black humour

2011-03-14T07:35:00.003Z

You may not realise this, but on Friday a global phenomenon occurred. That phenomenon was a technological one for a technological age. Just as 9/11 made real-life footage dwarfed any disaster movie's capability almost eleven years ago, and the sight of a ship floating on a giant wave miles in land did it again, so to did the technological world of SMS and the sick joke come to pass.

By Friday evening,. many phones across the UK, and probably the world were buzzing with impromptu jokes that alluded to an immensely scary natural disaster the death toll of which is unknown but no doubt in the many thousand. With the buzzing will have also come that odd moment where you snigger and then think "I'm going to Hell because I really shouldn't be laughing at that".

In a way the sick jokes after any massive global news event are, I guess, an extension of the voyeurism we experience during the event. We become transfixed at image, moving or still, of a things that are in themselves horrendous events. Most people wouldn't dream of watching an execution online, but give us a massive event where we don;t actually see the dying up close and we're all there as it were.

What follows then are the jokes. Now, I have no evidence for this, but I wonder if the jokes are a way of dealing with an unconscious guilt at our voyeurism. That, in the face of such bloody awfulness we turn to humour as a way of masking our guilt that we all just gawped at thousands of people dying and, like rubber necking on the motorway just couldn't look away.

We're a funny lot us human being huh?

The Guardian's political crusade continues....

2011-03-13T07:20:00.005Z

I see the Guardian has not rested in its moral crusade against Andy Coulson this weekend after the collapse of a murder trial for an incident that occurred in 1987, when Coulson was a mere 19 years old. It's a slightly confusing one so let's just flesh out the details.

In 1987 someone was murdered with an axe. In 2000 a private investigator who had worked for the News of the World was jailed for seven years planting cocaine on someone to discredit them. In 2005 that PI was released and got a job at the News of the World again. In 2008 he was charged with the aforementioned axe murder 21 years previously, and then on Friday, 24 years later the trial collapsed with the Crown offering no evidence against him.

So where does Coulson fit into this? Well, he was Editor of the NotW between 2003 and 2007, so was "in charge" when some subordinates re-hired the PI when he came out of prison. This appears to be the first "charge" by the Guardian, although as yet that I can see they've not published any evidence that Coulson personally hired the guy, but the buck stops at the top right, and I'm sure that Alan Rusbridger would take wholesale responsibility should it turn out one of his low-level tea boys was employed after a prison sentence.

The second "strong link" to Coulson - as Mr Rusbridger puts it - seems to be about the collapsed trial on Friday. You see, it appears to be that Coulson, when editor in 2005 should have anticipated a collapsed murder trial six years later and blocked any attempt to re-hire a guy jailed for an incident unrelated to his work for the News of the World.

Called me old-fashioned, but I'd call that just a "mildly circumstantial" rather than "strong" link, but then I'm not a wholesale Murdoch hater and as such I am no doubt biased and can be therefore dismissed out of hand for not seeing the "truth" like others do.

Apparently though, there are "judgment" issues here.

There is the judgment of Coulson himself for (a) not being able to see into the future which clearly any normal person can do, and (b) allowing a scumbag jailed for a crime unrelated to his work for the newspaper to be paid under contract by the newspaper again. The perceptive might notice that the Guardian has had to do a quick doublethink switch at this point and forget all its progressive editorials in the past about offending and rehabilitation and go down the Daily Mail route of "once a nose picker always a nose picker" line.

The other judgment issue is, of course, David Cameron. You see, he shouldn't, apparently, have employed Coulson, because the Guardian wrote to him and told him that some years previously Coulson had been in charge of an newspaper that had allowed a scumbag jailed for a crime unrelated to his work for the newspaper to be paid under contract by the newspaper again. After all, only a progressive soft left-wing tosser would do that and the Guardian, being in full Daily Mail mode naturally finds such behaviour despicable.

What's more, the Guardian told him that this guy was up on a murder charge! Cameron should, it seems, have just cut Coulson loose immediately because clearly (a) the guy must be assumed to be guilty, (b) Coulson's tenuous link to him previously make him guilty of something horrible by association, and (c) that association will go upward and although it's some degree of separation Cameron will be guilty because of his association with a man who has an association with a guilty man.

Rusbridger must have been truly gutted when the trial collapsed. Not you understand because the vicious murder of a man in 1987 remains unsolved, but rather because it meant the angle couldn't be "Cameron is linked to Coulson, Coulson is linked to vicious murderer, Downing Street has blood on its hand". Instead what we've actually got is:

"Cameron is linked to Coulson, and Coulson is linked to a man acquitted of murder but who did do something unrelated but dodgy resulting in a prison sentence many years ago when Cameron was working for Carlton Communications, but the guy was re-hired by the paper Coulson was "in charge" of when Cameron was an MP, and Cameron was told about this five years later so this clearly calls into question Cameron's judgment at hiring Coulson in Downing Street."

Certainly puts the complaints of many Guardian readers about the idiocy of Daily Mail "exposes" into context doesn't it?

Scaremongering of the Day

2011-03-11T10:23:00.002Z

There's a brilliant bit of scaremongering this morning over on Liberal Conspiracy.

Up to 40% of patients could be completely removed from their doctor’s surgery lists without their knowledge due to “cost saving initiatives” being planned by NHS managers.

Anyone who has not visited their surgery in the last six months and who does not respond to the two letters asking them to confirm their details will be automatically struck off GP lists.....

Doctors in Brent have expressed their concern that the new plans could also put lives at risk.

Now, back in the world of "reality" even if you were "struck off" the GP list that does not mean you cannot get an appointment to see a doctor. After all, if that was the case why are the streets not littered with the corpses of illegal immigrants not able to get to a GP?

The truth is, anyone who is really vulnerable or at risk health wise probably isn't going to not be seeing a doctor for over six months anyway. Where someone does need to see a doctor, whether they;re registered or not, they'll still be able too.

Move along, nothing to see here.

Wasting taxpayers money complaining about wasting taxpayers money

2011-03-11T07:29:00.005Z

Here's something for your amusement and delectation. Some many remember the other week that questions were raised about a possible conflict of interest for the Yes2AV campaign and the Electoral Reform Society in terms of how its commercial arm stood to gain significantly from a yes vote and earn lots of money from your pockets i.e. tax revenue.

Likewise, you might also remember how the No2AV campaign got its knickers in a twist saying that the Yes campaign was peddling lies about the cost of the referendum and what not to the taxpayer in comparisons to things that could be bought for the same amount money.

You might notice a convergent theme here about "taxpayers money" and what is and what is not sound spending etc. Which lead me on to this. Both supporters on both sides have wasted taxpayers money tabling early day motions about the shocking tactics of each in relation to the spending and/or possible spending of taxpayer money.

Yes2AV Motion:

No2AV Amendment to Yes2AV motion:

The 3vident conclusion that one is left to draw is when it comes to spending your money they're all quite happy to it with pointless rhetoric slapped and printed on a piece of paper for each of them to feel good about.

Please don't even get me started on the £600 spent tabling a motion to promote family mealtimes.

Who's to blame for the killing of Libyans abd beyond?

2011-03-11T06:18:00.002Z

You might think this is a rather obvious and simple question top answer. There is only one person to blame for the killings in Libya and that's Muammar Qaddafi, and in terms of beyond well that would be all the other despots etc.

Of course, if you're one of those "all things are the fault of the West" type people then clearly you're going to blame the people that sold the guns instead. However, there is one other person you forgot. The Chairman of the United States Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke.

Yes, really, honestly, truthfully, there are some people who think that far from so-called "crimes against humanity" being the fault of the mentalist that ordered the indiscriminate shooting of heavy firepower on people, the real fault lies with man that introduced quantitative easing in the US.

Don't believe me? Go and read this then.

Apparently, by flooding the US market with extra-cash when they were strapped, it deflated the dollar meaning the cost of food rose in poor countries like those in North Africa, thus leading to revolution against despot, thus leading to the despot using their guns.... ergo.... the deaths and whatever else are actually not the fault of the despots but are in fact the fault of the person that decided to flooded the US market with cash and thereby reduce the value of the dollar.

It's amazing what utter absurd logic some people will come out with these days in order to satisfy a self-loathing tendency and appease the guilt of the guilty init?

Hat Tip: an email from someone I thought might be a rock legend for a split second.

++ UKUncut breach Computer Misuse Act? ++

2011-03-10T12:19:00.019Z

Oh dear, UKUncut look to have gone over the edge. They've just put out a press release about how they've "hijacked" a Vodafone website and have been boasting on Twitter too about how they were "leaked" the passwords.

I just spoke to the person on their press release phone number and asked them how they were going to deal with the possibility of having just admitted to committing a crime under the Computer Misuse Act in terms of unauthorised access to systems and could be facing many years in prison.

The response was priceless. "Errrrr ok....errrr...... I'll have to get back to you".

Example hijacking:

Update: UKUncut are now claiming they have a master password.
The question is how will Vodafone respond?

Update II: Statement from Vodafone

We’ve seen a couple of posts on World of Difference winners’ blogs relating to allegations of tax avoidance. Given these are incorrect, they have been removed.

World of Difference winners are doing great things for charities up and down the country. It’s very sad to see how low people will go to further spread misinformation and for the charitable programme to be used as a platform for this kind of protest.

And some more on The Register.

Update III: There seem to be quite a few missing the point and misunderstanding what is and what is not authorised access to a system. These people seem to be under the illusion that because someone who legitimately had a password gave someone else that password that makes the access authorised. However, that only works if the person with the password in the first is the owner of the system and not a user.

In this case they were not. This was the case of a user being given access to a system and that user then giving access to someone else onto the system that was not authorised by the owner. Had UKUncut not acted upon on it then it would be a different matter, but they did act upon it and used credentials gained without authority to access a system that they were not given authority to access.

That is unauthorised access. Whether anyone prosecutes is a different matter.

Update IV (9.30PM): Vodafone have now updated their statement, presumably as a result of the Guardian saying "Vodafone" + "hacked" in the same sentence and the concern that people might think anything more than a basic website was in some way compromised - they did after all lose loads of equipment due to walk-in theft the other week. The statement now has the addition:

Following an investigation, and contrary to some online media reports, we can confirm that there was no hack of our World of Difference web site today. The posts which appeared on two World of Difference winners’ blogs, were published as a result of an individual sharing log in details with a protest group, not as a result of a hack.

There was no risk to World of Difference winners, or Vodafone customers’ personal data at any time.

This confirms that the credentials did have permissions to edit more than just one area of the site (odd security model), and that an individual disclosed these details in order to provide access to others who were not authorised to access the site.

Redundant Public Servant errr.... not redundant (but may not be a public servant)

2011-03-10T09:52:00.005Z

Ever heard of the Redundant Public Servant blog? He's spent the last five months or so moaning that he's being made redundant and guest contributed at the Guardian about it too. He was finally made redundant on March 3rd and then got a new job on March 8th resulting in him giving up blogging.

Is it wrong of me to find his moaning and "support" for people facing redundancy and "DOOOM!" followed by a period of unemployment of a massive five days mildly amusing? Probably. But then, I work in IT so redundancy programmes are nothing new, even in the good times. In fact I've been through my fair share of redundancy rounds, even got made redundant once on a Friday and started a new job on the Monday.

In fact, there's a consultation going on right now which will result in over 500 job losses.* I'm safe for now although it seems clear to me that the writing is on the wall in the next 12 months. C'est la vie, business is business. I won't be writing a "woe is me" blog when the time comes, in fact you won't even know if my prediction is right until I perhaps start a new job.

Public Servants don't know how good they have it compared to the rest of us. The saddest thing really is there seems to remain an odd belief that there really is something called a "job for life".

Hat Tip: Via email.

* That is why the blog has been slow for the last month or so if you were wondering. Lots of things going on and lots more work do to as things start to downsize.

The Coalition's is creating a topsy pervy world

2011-03-10T07:31:00.004Z

Yesterday, I refrained from really commenting too much on the Government's latest nannying over smoking, mainly because I was flabbergasted that a Government that so proudly claims to be all about freedom and even has a Freedom Bill would carry out yet another act of extreme anti-freedom all in the name of protecting individuals from themselves and their own choices.

No longer will cigarettes be able to displayed, instead you will have to ask for them and they'll be hidden under the counter. What a strange, amusing and topsy turvy world we live in these days huh?

Once upon a time you could buy your cigarettes proudly on display, but if you wanted to purchase an 8 inch glass dildo and some KY Jelly to ease its insertion into your chosen orifice you had to go down some back street and clandestinely enter a blacked out shop.

Soon though, the opposite will be true. Soon you will have to embarrassingly ask for a packet of Malboro and feel ashamed that the thing you want is socially hidden from view. Meanwhile, next door, there will be a window display featuring gag balls (not oranges), whips, chains, strap-ons and assorted insertion tools many of which are designed to make your eyes water.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not for a minute being a prude here and suggesting that we shouldn't allow the sale of anal probes, remote control vibrators, crotchless panties and peephole bras on the High Street. Far from it in fact.

However, isn't it just a little bit odd that the argument deployed to justify putting cigarettes out of sight includes "think of the children!" whilst the very same children can see other things that we might think they're too young to see so openly displayed?

It's not actually a topsy turvy world, rather it's a topsy pervy world.

Transport Minister meets alien defenders

2011-03-09T14:21:00.005Z

Who knew huh?

Mike Penning: I have met with the MIB and have visited their headquarters in Milton Keynes.

Via Hansard

Syed Kamal MEP reports back from the EP

2011-03-09T11:03:00.004Z

Shoes apparently are the importance of the day according to my latest email from him.

Click Image for Larger Version
Imelda Marcos eat your heart out! We have Syed Kamal!

Note: The other images in the email were boring. I think his mailing list may have buggered up :-)

Uneconomic acts between consenting adults

2011-03-09T07:32:00.011Z

Did you know that if you run a business and you put out a tender for anyone over 18 to come and do a couple of weeks work experience for you for free then it's illegal? You may be thinking "WTF?" at this. You may be thinking that in a free and open society consenting adults can choose what they want to do, be it kinky sex games or making tea for two weeks, but you'd be wrong... well wrong according to some anyway.

You see, yesterday on Twitter, the Political Editor of The Jewish Chronicle, Martin Bright posted the following to Twitter.
The link, had you chosen to follow it at the time, would have taken you to a page of Miloco recording studio that was offering "work experience" for anyone over 18 who wanted to get a feel for what goes on in such places.

Unlike many work experience placements and descriptions, this one was brutally honest about the reality of such things, as you can see from the Google cache. In other words, you'll be making cups of tea, generally helping out in the studio doing all the menial stuff that someone has to do and that you won;t be getting your hands on expensive equipment.

Sadly, such honesty about the reality of work experience that most of us will recall lovingly, was not appreciated by many a po-faced lefty. This was and is shameful exploitation and illegal because they should be paying the minimum wage dammit! After all "you have to pay people for work". So what happened next?

A letter from a solicitor bemoaning the shameful exploitation... and then the studio removes the page from their site. The thing is, is it really illegal?

Well, according to the Government's Business Link site, in order for someone to be entitled to the minimum wage they have to be a "worker" and defining them as such requires them to pass "The Worker Test".

Key elements in establishing whether someone is a worker include:
whether there is an obligation on the individual to perform the work and in return an obligation on you to provide the work
whether the individual is rewarded, such as through money or benefits in kind
When this guidance refers to a 'worker' it is referring to worker in this sense. If somebody is a worker, they will qualify for the NMW

So, let's apply the test.

Is there an obligation on a person taken up a placement to actually turn up and is there an obligation for the recording studio to give them absolutely anything to do when and if they do turn up? No. Its "work experience".
Is there any financial or benefit in kind being provided by the studio to those who do the placement? Errrr no.

So... put your hand up if you genuinely think that a person taking up such an opportunity can be defined under the official guidance as a worker on the basis of them choosing to do something where they are (a) under no obligation to actually do it and (b) agree to the terms that it is unpaid and they will receive no actual benefit from it from the outset.

I expect there will be some who will still put their hand up on the basis that they think it outrageous that any business should do this. However, that's a value judgment.

True, you might not like what they're doing, and frankly I think anyone choosing to take up the offer would be nuts, but it doesn't change the fact that entitlement to minimum wage is not about the "work" but about whether the person doing it qualifies as a "worker".

I guess that won't stop some people wetting their pants over what they think ought to be illegal rather than what actually is illegal.

N.B. Thanks to Quizzicalgaze for proof reading and other thoughts.

Did Gwyneth Paltrow just help a convicted paedophile make money?

2011-03-08T14:12:00.004Z

Uhoh.... where was Max Clifford and all those clever agents saying "errrr Gwyneth... you know the song you're singing will earn a convicted paedophile hundreds of thousands in royalties right?"
C'est la vie!

Note: Cue smartarse saying because I linked to the video and song I'm just as bad.

Has Conor Burns been to Libya too?

2011-03-08T09:21:00.003Z

Is Conor Burns MP actually a secret undercover revolutionary spook out-performing the SAS?

Overseas visits
Name of donor: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bahrain
Address of donor: c/o The Embassy of the Kingdom of Bahrain, 30 Belgrave Square, London SW1X 8QB
Amount of donation (or estimate of the probable value): £3,279
Destination of visit: Bahrain
Date of visit: 21-25 October 2010
Purpose of visit: in my capacity as Chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Bahrain I was invited to visit to country to met with Government Ministers and others and to observe the Parliamentary elections that were taking place during the visit.
(Registered 16 November 2010)

Name of donor: Government of Tunisia
Address of donor: Tunisian Embassy, 29 Princes Gate, London SW7 1QG
Amount of donation (or estimate of the probable value): return flights to Tunis and hotel accommodation; value £1,907.10
Destination of visit: Tunis, Tunisia
Date of visit: 4-7 January 2011
Purpose of visit: to meet the British Tunisia Chamber of Commerce, officials in the Department for Culture and Tourism, members of the Tunisian Parliament, the Mayor of Hammermat and some Government Ministers, at the invitation of the Ambassador of Tunisia in the United Kingdom
(Registered 9 February 2011)

You all thought they were spontaneous uprisings didn't you?

Stand up straight boy!

2011-03-08T06:46:00.003Z

Original page here.

IDS simplifies further... but will Osborne follow on personal taxation?

2011-03-08T06:12:00.003Z

Simplification. Iain Duncan-Smith clearly "gets it". Instead of a multitude of benefits, many mean-tested, there really ought o be just single schemes that are universal but that are also not so extravagant that they either (a) encourage you to stay sitting on your arse and not work, or (b) penalise you for having the audacity to work and save for your old age.

Those are the two situations currently, and it seems in the case of the latter now, Iain Duncan-Smith is making proposals to simplify the pension system so as to address the complete mess left by Labour that punished saving and made the poor poorer through the complexity of the system.

Naturally, I would expect such changes to be opposed by the lefties, and I imagine they'll do so on the basis that to scrap the pension credit system will mean putting all the people processing such forms out of work. After all, that is the real driver behind most of the credit system. The credit system is the proverbial Keynesian hole that the state employ men to dig and men to fill.

Anyhow, seeing as Iain Duncan-Smith "gets it" on the matter of simplification,when will George Osborne finally "get it" on the matter of simplifying the personal tax system?

George "hears" us?

2011-03-06T06:52:00.002Z

Fuel duty huh? Now theres a real political hot potato. As the Middle East countries with all the oil go a bit nutty, the price of a barrel of oil goes up and after you chuck in the refining costs to turn crude into diesel or petrol we all start paying more at the pump.

Yes, fuel for your car has almost reached a shocking 50p per litre. Yes, that really does mean that 80p of the price you pay goes straight to the Treasury.

It was bullshit under Labour that this situation exists and it remains bullshit under the Coalition. But, never fear people, there is alight at the end of tunnel. The Chancellor George Osborne "hears" us when we complain. He says the 1p rise above inflation due in April is Labour's fault anyway as they pre-prepared it, but he's a nice chap so he may not implement it.

Isn't that so nice of him? Instead of a 40 litre tank costing you about £56 he's going to make sure it only costs you about £55.60. You can then buy a packet of fruit gums (if you're lucky) with the extra 40p. That works out to a massive £20.80 saving per year on the assumption that the price stay the same for 52 weeks.

Let's be clear for just one second. Refusing to put a tax increase already planned on something that has an extortionate level of tax on it already is not help because he's hearing anyone. It's a sop and it will likely make bugger all difference as the price continues to rise.

If the Chancellor wants growth then he should get it by taking an axe to fuel duty and put money back in our pockets to spend in the economy on other thing. After all, it won't just help people out it will also save a few businesses from ruin.

Ah yes, but what about the deficit some might say. Well, to those I would say this. Financial arrangements, be they personal, business or national, are influenced by events. Yes there is a bloody great deficit, but there is also a crisis in the region that keeps most of the world moving. So you do some shifting around with the budgets to cope, hopefully with contingency that you planned for (bet they didn't).

We could, perhaps, start by getting rid of Andrew Mitchell's nonsensical International Development department. When you're "in the shit" financially you don't start giving away what little money you have to strangers - although I realise that such ideas are "pie in the sky".

Seriously though, what you don't do is stand there and tell us you "hear" the complaints and then propose to throw us a bone worth about a half of the square root of zero.

Liars versus Media Watchers: Both idiots

2011-03-05T08:26:00.005Z

How funny, some reporter that no one will have ever heard of has decided to resign from a newspaper that (a) few people read and (b) is so patently one step away from pure fiction on most days that you'd need to be thicker than a retarded monkey to not realise and it's BIG news for the tax avoiding right-on Guardian. Hell, they even have his resignation letter to the Daily Star proprietor, also proprietor of porn (a dying industry thanks to the Internet but I digress).

So, the letter is a bit of a rant by this unknown reporter about how the Daily Star makes stuff up. I know, shocking isn't it? A national daily newspaper with tits and arse on the front page makes stuff up huh? Who'da thunk it? Shocking betrayal of trust to its readers huh? Outrageous! The world is ending... arggghhh the sky is falling, 2012 looms, it's a sign I tell thee!

Apparently the newspaper also engages in hypocrisy, where it laments for example a comedian for a dodgy joke about race of gender, and then on the following pages engages in that which it just condemned pages before. Such a rarity isn't it? Newspaper shouldn't do that and it's absolutely correct for the Guardian to report this sort of thing because it would never have an editorial stance that was the opposite of other things it wrote or did.

You can probably tell where I'm going with this. It is a truly slow news days when the big news is for newspapers is about newspapers themselves. Sure, it gets the fired up anally retentive "media watch" type people even more fired up. I'm talking here about the gibbering and chattering classes who, when an horrendous act of violence occurs never blame the person that did it but rather like to say that the media are to blame.

Even the reporter you've never heard of is does it in his resignation letter, noting that "The lies of a newspaper in London can get a bloke's head caved in down an alley in Bradford." Actually, the person that caves someone head in in Bradford is probably the type of person who would do that anyway, the newspaper didn't make them do it.They made themselves do it because they're a twat that does that sort of thing anyway.

If these people must engage in post hoc ergo propter hoc foolishness, perhaps they ought to start blaming the parents of the parents of parents instead right back to the Middle Ages and further? Fuck it, blame shagging. After all, if it wasn't for shagging people wouldn't be born and if people weren't born then they wouldn't do terrible nasty things to other people. Let's ban shagging to stop the violence because shagging is to blame!

Actually, thinking about, banning shagging would please the pious hand-wringers greatly I think. After all, Richard Desmond makes his money from it so he'd be skint. Everyone's a winner!

Seriously though. The news that a newspaper makes stuff up is not news, it's basic common sense. Those that shout from the rooftops about it on their missions of truth betray something far worse about their true motives. For within the moral righteousness lies their own disdain for the intellectual capabilities of the proles to spot bullshit when they see it.

The reality is that this "story" is not about "truth in media". It's about the low opinion of the masses held by the pseudo-intellectual elite. The same elite who engage daily in fallacious reasoning to justify curtailing the freedom of individuals (who are not as clever as them) to read what they want, when they want.

There is a distinct irony here too. For they so hate the views of people that would curtails freedom that they wish to curtail freedom to combat it.

Fuck it, we might as well just start burning books now and be done with it. At least it'll keep both the knuckle-draggers and snobbish media watching elitists happy, they're different sides of exactly the same coin after all.

How to build a semi-conspiracy theory in 10 steps

2011-03-05T07:50:00.008Z

Morning all. As it's Saturday I thought I'd have a little fun providing you with a guide to building your own partisan semi-conspiracy theory in just 10 steps. Here's how to do it.

Choose your target, ensure they are of a diametrically opposed political viewpoint and are involved with a political organisation you hate the most on principle. Remember you don't have to be in an organisation yourself. Basically, if you're right wing then your target is going to be socialist scum and if you're left wing they're vicious fledgling neo-nazi scum. If you're a centrist you just hate everyone whilst pretending to be moderate. Simples!
Bitch, moan about and hassle your target enough that they call you a loopy loony tune of mega-proportions.
Bitch, moan about and hassle your target's boss about how your target has called you a name.
If the boss contacts you but doesn't agree with everything you say, they're in on it. If the boss doesn't contact you at all, they're in on it.
Contact the boss's boss to complain about the target and the boss.
Apply step #4 to the action or inaction of the boss's boss.
Contact the boss's boss's boss to complain about the target, their boss and their boss.
Apply step #4 to the action or inaction of the boss's boss's boss.
Continue previous steps ad nauseum up and sideways through the target's organisation. You may also want to break out of the organisation and bring other organisations in where someone in the target organisation left and went elsewhere. The tenuous connection may be tenuous but it remains a connection.
Go "public" with all the gory details of how no one wants to listen to you because they're all bastards from that organisation you hate, reaffirming why everyone should hate the organisation, because they're all either in on it or at least complicit in the event that started everything.

DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

*** Yes I know that in reality this will take more than 10 steps, but hey, that wouldn't make as good a title would it?

Asessing risk will never be as cheap again!

2011-03-04T09:17:00.002Z

At the beginning of the week, if I recall correctly, there was a news story doing the rounds that a European Court ruling has decided that it was sexual discrimination if insurance companies, who deal in assessing risk, had different premiums for men and women.

That young males tend to have more crashes than young females, and in general its men rather than women that make claims is apparently not fair. Ironically enough the ruling was about it not being fair to men which makes a change.

Of course, the ruling is absurd, but I was rather amused to see that the Government Equalities Office pumped out a press release yesterday on age discrimination that said,

Providers of financial services, such as insurance companies, will still be allowed to use age when assessing risk and deciding prices.

How long before the EU rules that is wrong too, at which point insurance premiums will rise for everyone?

You see this is the hilarious and utterly bizarre consequence of the so-called "equalities" agenda.

On the one hand, the rulings say things like "you can;t have a blanket policy" that discriminates, and then, on the other, what you end up with is a blanket policy that equalises the cost which then means overrule the insurance companies just raise the premiums for all to cover the cost of those they consider a higher risk.

Thus the perception of discrimination is removed, but underneath it still remains but we all pay equally for it. Genius init?

Graffiti of the Day

2011-03-04T08:54:00.003Z

Alright, alright, I know I said I would be back yesterday but I got sidetracked with something that is as yet unfinished, however, I'm back now. So, to kick off with a just a small snippet from the graffiti board in parliament aka Early Day motions, we have this little waste of money.

That this House records its congratulations to Ryan Giggs on the 20th anniversary of his debut for Manchester United on 2 March 1991; is aware that throughout his illustrious career he has developed a deserved reputation for sportsmanship and fair play; recognises that his skills have been admired throughout the world; that 20 years on he is now the country's most decorated player, and that he is widely seen as a role model for team mates and young footballers everywhere; thanks him for his contribution to the national game for both his club and his country, Wales; and wishes him all the very best for his future.

I prefer to call this the "spot the Manchester United fans and/or the Welshman" EDM.

Whilst we're on the subject of graffiti, I was amused by the last words in this little treasure.

That this House notes the celebrations of Cornwall's patron saint, St Piran, on 5 March each year are growing in scope, support and significance; believes that this is a valuable opportunity for the people of Cornwall to celebrate their unique heritage, language, culture and aspirations; recognises that those who support patron saints' days in other regions and nations in the United Kingdom are also seeking official acknowledgement; welcomes the fact that several town and parish councils have already made the day a staff holiday; and calls on the Government to make St Piran's Day a public holiday in Cornwall.

No doubt the people of Devon who drive to work in Cornwall will be well chuffed if such a ludicrous idea of county-based public holidays came about.

Parish Notice

2011-03-02T08:36:00.003Z

Apologies for the lack of blogging all. I have been away for a few days and am now catching up on mail. Back tomorrow.

The future's bright. The future's license plates

2011-02-25T07:35:00.000Z

Note: Big Brother was not involved in this post.

Serial rapist on "day release"?

2011-02-25T02:32:00.003Z

In light of the fact that a convicted murderer has been charged with killing a convicted paedophile - a justice of sorts which some may think ought to have been enforced by the state in the first place - the Sun has a rather worrying tale this morning.

Apparently a serial rapist - who committed his offences against six woman and was told by the judge he should be kept away from women for 30 years and given six life sentence in 1988 - is being taken out daily to do a job in a sofa shop.

Justice huh?

#Yes2AV totally busted?

2011-02-24T10:30:00.005Z

Following on from the last post about the AV campaigns,Ed Howker has an impressive tale over at the Spectator about how the Yes2AV campaign has a rather amazing financial conflict of interest in its funding stream.

Rarely do I cut and paste large sections of articles, but what has been written should be read more widely.

What I [Ed Howker] found reveals a catalogue of undeclared donations, hidden money trails and one massive conflict of interest of such comical proportions that even Berlusconi would blush. It shows, in effect, that the largest single donor to the 'Yes' campaign is Britain's no1 vendor of ballot papers and vote counting services – a massively profitable outfit whose commercial interest in a new, complicated Westminster voting system is clear.

Last week, the Electoral Reform Society – the organisation really in charge of the referendum campaign – admitted to making a donation of £1.05 million to it, but not only do internal Society documents show that they have really donated much more, they’ve also been less than open about the real source of their funding.

First, let’s examine the “£1.05 million” claim. Well, this turns out to be an admission of only one fraction of the Society’s involvement. The internal documents show their assistance is two pronged – consisting not just of the cash donation they have admitted to, but also an entirely separate gift of staff and resources that has not been publicly declared. This support, which extends to the secondment of more than a dozen paid staff, means that well over half the resources used to fund the Yes campaign are being directed by the Electoral Reform Society.

Now let’s turn to the “£1 million” donation. The Society turns out to be the majority shareholder in Britain’s leading and highly profitable supplier of election services, and its dividends are funding the campaign. The business, which is called Electoral Reform Services Ltd, turns over £21m. As the piece says:

"There is almost no aspect of our democracy ERSL’s services do not touch – their stationary and postal voting packs, poll cards and ballot papers are used in parliamentary, European and local elections. They have already been awarded to contract to administer the 2012 Mayoral election using electronic counting machines. So, should Britain decide to hold more complex elections as with the Alternative Voting system, ERSL could be well-placed to receive the contracts."

So the company in charge of administering the referendum on AV is itself funding one side of the campaign. As the internal documents from the Society state, “it is possible that ERSL will profit as a result of a YES vote (increased business opportunities).” And if ERSL profits then so will the Electoral Reform Society, which is currently straining its resources to persuade Britain to vote Yes. This is a financial conflict of interest of the very gravest kind.

Total ownership. Totally busted?

The pathetic hypocrisy of the Yes and No campaigns

2011-02-24T06:43:00.007Z

Politics, as I so often point out is full of such much rank hypocrisy it really does become absurd in the extreme sometimes and today is no different. In fact, today is especially funny because we have a convergence between the debate over the "cuts agenda" and the "AV referendum", and I'm rather pleased to say it all revolves around my personal little equation (which should really be given a name) that goes:

Ul = c \ uc

That is, an argument will be deployed that talks of an arbitrary unit loss (Ul), which is calculated by taking the value of a proposed cut (c) and dividing it by the unit cost (uc) of the given arbitrary thing. For example, if the unit cost of one teacher is £1, and a cut of £1000 in back office functionality is proposed, then it will be argued that the cut means a loss of 1000 teachers.

You see, yesterday we heard much about a False Economy report which played loose and fast in some places with the little cut over unit cost is equal to unit loss, and, quite rightly, it was slated by the target of the report, the Coalition.

But, we also saw the No2AV campaign come under fire too, because it was playing with the equation too if we change the meaning of "c" from cut to cost.Their argument in adverts was that the referendum cost (c) could be shown to represent a unit loss (Ul) if it was arbitrarily divided by the unit cost (uc) of a chosen emotive subject, like say a cardiac unit for a premature/ill baby - complete with picture of baby natch!

Naturally this has led to much screaming from the Yes campaign about how No2AV is disgustingly pushing a "vote No or the baby dies" line. Will Straw is busy posting on Twitter for example saying that political advertising should conform to decent standards and the same rules as other forms of advertising.

He's also posted on Left Foot Forward about how this is "the nasty campaign" and it's hit an "all time low". Now, he's probably got a point there. Political advertising that plays loose and fast with figures and pushes arbitrary extrapolations probably shouldn't be something we should expect.

However, you have to wonder whether Will Straw and other's sudden conversion to requirement decency has been brought about by a brief bout of memory myopia, because I don't remember any of the Yes supporters condemning the following little advert that pushed a "Vote Labour or you'll die of cancer" line during the election campaign. If I remember rightly, anyone who had an issue with it was displaying faux outrage especially if they were not on the Left.

Now,I'm not going to accuse the Labour-led*** Yes2AV campaign of trying to appear "super-outraged" to use a Sunny Hundal term but rather I'm going to point out how ridiculously fucking absurd they're being.

Not only are they complaining that No2AV are using spurious logic that they also use in relation to the impact cuts. They're also rather miffed that the No2AV campaign are doing political advertising that they themselves have supported in the past.

Let's be clear right now. Both sides are being fucking morons, and both sides need to grow the fuck up.

*** The use of the term "Labour-led" is a deliberate piss-take out of the way people like Will Straw call the the No campaign "Tory-led" when it is clear that both campaign are cross-party in their make-up, and "evidence-based blogger" should stick to reality.

Quick question about Libya.....

2011-02-23T14:15:00.004Z

Currently there are a few people getting up in arms (if you pardon the pun) about Libya buying weapons from the UK, weapons which, notionally at least are now being used to crush political dissent etc. Cue "blood on their hands" type argument etc.

So I'm wondering, if, and it remains a big if of course, but if Britain along with some other nations, with or without a UN Resolution, decide that is enough is enough with Qaddafi and that it's time for military intervention, will the same people start marching saying "not in our name"?

We've been here before of course with other such incidents where the logic of the "liberal Left" flows something like this.

Outrage at despotic leader killing civilians usually with a nod to how it's all the West's fault really for either selling the despot arms or turning a blind eye because of some shallow self-interest.
Outrage when West intervenes because it's nothing short of imperialism and we wouldn't be in this situation if it wasn't for the West in the first place, and look at how they're now killing innocent civilians trying to take out the leader we were complaining about earlier. Try them for war crimes!!!

Just saying.

The cock jockey and his "theories"

2011-02-23T07:11:00.006Z

Given all the fun going on in Libya at the moment, I just wanted to post about something that for many will be tedious, and for some will result in the comments such as "why do you bother paying attention to him" or "well I think he's quite quite loopy", but I sadly, just can't help myself when the person in question posts such nonsense.

Over the past few years now it's happened quite a few time that Tim Ireland of Bloggerheads has done the aforementioned nonsense thing, whether it be directed at me, Guido Fawkes, Iain Dale, Nadine Dorries etc. The last of these being his latest bête noire.

Now I guess, at this moment, I need to do a declaration of interest thing. I do, shock horror, know Nadine Dorries. Ergo whatever I post is dismissed by Tim Ireland with ad hominen argument, but, the real irony is that it is only because of him that even I know her.

Brief background for you, some years ago, a website appeared that was libelous against Nadine. Tim Ireland, amongst others, believed that the site was set up by Nadine supporters with the deliberate intention of blaming left wingers for it and getting them to repeat libel. Tim Ireland decided, in his infinitely sane wisdom, to imply I was behind it, and so I came into contact with Nadine.

If you wish to read that little online saga then click the following link about Tim Ireland's bullshitting. For further background, if you're truly bored, check out "Tim Ireland tells lies shock!" about how Iain Dale offered to help Tim and had it thrown back in his face.

What we essentially have with Tim Ireland is one of those online characters who likes to leaps to conclusions because he's already decided what the truth is. He thus fits what he sees into that "truth" more often than not. He's also not a fan of Nadine on a personal and political level, recently he did a post about her suggesting that she personally hated him because she believes she's doing God's bidding.

That the Police from her constituency traveled all the way down to where he lives in South England to talk to him about his behaviour towards her, as reported here, after he insisted that she was lying about even having spoken to the Police may well have had something to do with his dislike for her too.

So anyway, that little bit of background over, the latest "conclusion jump" revolves around the decision of someone who was employed by Nadine Dorries to resign, as reported the other week, in the Beds on Sunday. Click the following if you really want to read the latest Tim Ireland Conclusion Jump™.

OK, now you've read that, and if you didn't because of the boringly dense way he writes, his "argument" (and use the quote sparingly) goes thus.

Feb 9th: Nadine Dories says on Twitter she had one-to-one meeting with David Cameron the previous day of the 8th.
Feb 13th: Beds on Sunday reports Nadine aide who Tim has shown interest in and implied corruption about resigns.
Ergo: David Cameron has reined Nadine in, told her to let one of her paid staff go, all because of his sterling investigative work, and Nadine and Co are trying to smear him as cover.

Now, let's just go on a journey to that wonderful place we all call "reality" and be blunt. The previously mentioned aide, who cited intrusion into her personal life, resigned not after Nadine had a meeting with David Cameron but before, the day before in fact, on the 7th.

I did decide to point this out to Tim Ireland on his site, but he doesn't publish my comments. Instead he passed comment on the comment in an update, calling me a "thug" and rather bizarrely suggesting that I was operating for Nadine and was sent by her to point it out.

That I was sitting in my home office on Saturday morning and just happened to spot a gaping hole in Tim Ireland's latest bullshit can never be the truth you see. There's always something more, after all, there is some sort of disjointed campaign against him that involves bloggers, MPs (some guided by God apparently), Cabinet ministers and people related to others in Downing Street.. this even goes right up to the top at Google you know but I digress!

Having pointed out to Tim he's talking bullshit (again), he went with his modus operandi, that, when faced with something that disputes his world view, he changes the question. He did so this time with the caveat demand that the answer must come from someone else*** because I am, you see, a thug.

Incidentally, and as an aside, please note that I will not, like Tim Ireland, be starting a massive Internet campaign via Twitter etc because he has, to use his word, "smeared" me as a "criminal, who treats others violently and roughly, often for hire. Often a member of a gang, as an enforcer in organized crime, and misdemeanor". Life is too short to waste that much time on a hypocritical cock jockey right? A simply paragraph will do.

So, back to the subject at hand, Tim Ireland's latest "theory" and question switch. Not content you see that the woman resigned before Nadine Dorries saw David Cameron, the cock jockey's ego sneeked in and he changed the question - that I am not allowed to answer for he so commands it like King Cnut commanding the tide*** - to the following,

"does Lynn Elson claim to have resigned before or after the ‘Go Compare’ article was published?"

Loosely translated this question should actually read as,

Even if David Cameron didn't tell her to let her the woman go, I bet she still went after I (me, yes me, look at me, over here), posted my long expose into her criminal corruption and she's lying (LYING I TELL YOU *stamps foot*) if she tries to blame any other reason... so there!

Now, I can't possibly speak for Lynn Elson, I've never met or spoken to the woman. In fact, I didn't even know who she was until the other week. However, what I do know is this. Tim Ireland (the cock jockey) posted his article on the following date and time:

The aforementioned aide to Nadine sent her resignation citing personal life intrusion, as later reported by the Beds on Sunday, at 12:15:42 on Monday 7th February.

So errrr.... the answer is.... she resigned 2 hours, 31 minutes and 18 seconds before the article that Tim Ireland seems to think is the true reason for her resignation.

I have no doubt the direction of "questioning" will change again now in order to satisfy the presumed conclusion that the former aide has only resigned because she's guilty of some sort business malpractice and dodgy appropriation of public money, rather than as a result of her personal circumstances and intrusion into her personal life as stated in her resignation letter and told to the local press.

My guess is that it will be something along the lines of, "I was investigating, she preempted me after she found out I had phoned people she knew personally", then again, if he did that it might reinforce the view that her personal life was being intruded so perhaps not. Either way, the argument will change so he's still right.

I expect too that by me having the audacity to post and call Tim Ireland out on his bullshit again, will also be held against me by him as further evidence of an orchestrated smear campaign against him. That he is plain wrong with his inferences drawn from faulty presumptive evidence (that's called conjecture incidentally) will not be considered, but hey ho!

Incidentally, I would like to point something rather important out.

I don't think Tim Ireland is dangerous in any physical sense whatsoever, and anyone who uses his behaviour to justify some sort of vigilante harassment of him is out of order. The problem is, he's just a cock who lacks the emotional intelligence required to acknowledge and understand the reaction he sometimes receives from those he "investigates" because he's not an accredited member of the press.

*** The joy of being independent is that I do not act for anyone, no matter how much someone may try to falsely claim otherwise. As per previous posts about Tim Ireland (aka cock jockey) it is far more fun to simply point out his errors of my own accord, and anyone who thinks I am doing otherwise really doesn't know me as well as they think they do. And with that, I leave the cock jockey with a song to ponder upon.

Note: I'll probably be slated as homophobic or smearing him now as well for calling him a "cock jockey". You must never call anyone you think is an idiot a name you see.

Update 12:13pm: As predicted Tim's response to this has been to change the question, this time essentially saying "ahhh but was it before a different post". Sadly for him the post he's now citing as some sort of cause is one in which his own readers point out to him that his assertions are flaky, and also in which he says he has confirmed that someone's business address is also their residential address, which, naturally you understand did not involve any personal intrusion in anyway and was merely a step on the way to his seeking the truth for which he knows he is right.

Scaffolder humour huh?

2011-02-22T08:21:00.001Z

Spotted this at the bottom of the M1 this morning. Naturally I sniggered because I'm puerile.

A decent cut (of meat) from the Coalition?

2011-02-21T08:41:00.004Z

How errrr interesting...... it seems the numbers of horses slaughtered for human consumption in the UK went up sharply in 2010.

Not only do the bastard evil Tories eat babies, they eat horses too... no doubt whilst quaffing on champagne with the evil Lib Dems.... did I mention that they're all EVIL?

Balls accused of bad debts and thieving....

2011-02-19T07:32:00.003Z

Oh dear me, poor old Ed Balls is in a bit of a pickle. Not content with complete denying he had anything to do with the Government ejaculating money it didn't really have like a 13 year old that's just discovered what he can produce from his body, he's also refusing to pay off his own debts to the landlord of his former constituency office which he left in a state according to this morning's Mail.

As any student will tell him, when you rent a place to live you make an agreement to leave it in the state you found it, and, if you don't, then the Landlord can withhold your deposit and also if necessary claim for more if you're particularly poor tenants.

For example, removing the burglar alarm that the Landlord says is his, and saying that it's actually yours, might not be a good move.

It seems that all this boils down to is £1,966 in allegedly owed rent and the cost of making Balls' former constituency office good once more. Ironically, Balls has put out a statement saying "The bottom line is that there will be no payment of taxpayers’ money that is not justified".

Now, I may be wrong on this, but as this was his constituency office until the election was called, at which point his constituency disappeared and he vacated the premises, then it probably shouldn't be taxpayers money that pays for it but rather him personally or his local party because he wasn't an MP when he left.

Then again this is Ed Balls we're talking about, and he doesn't exactly have form for spending his money does he?

What was the question again?

2011-02-17T08:42:00.003Z

As per the last post we have another nifty spot by a reader. Looks like someone may not have been listening properly.... or they're just a politician and to used to answering the question they want too?

Kris Hopkins (Keighley) (Con): What recent progress his Department has made in recouping outstanding financial penalties that remain uncollected by HM Courts Service.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Jonathan Djanogly): We have published impact assessments and equality impact assessments alongside the legal aid consultation, and these set out in detail what we think the effects of the proposals might be. We must face up to tough choices, and our proposals focus resources on those who need help most for the most serious cases in which legal advice and representation are justified.

Kris Hopkins: I think that was the wrong answer to my question. I hope the Secretary of State has made progress in collecting the money that criminals have been fined, and may I ask that once we have collected some of the money and we have made a contribution to reducing the deficit, we increase our prison capacity?

Mr Speaker: Order. The Minister delivered his answer with admirable force and self-confidence, but I think it suffered from being the wrong answer, as he was, perhaps, not expecting to be responding to this question. If he can provide us with the right answer to the question now, we will be very grateful.

Mr Djanogly: I think the appropriate answer in the circumstances, Mr Speaker, is that we will look into this issue and get back to the House.

Personally speaking, the appropriate answer ought to have been "oh bugger" but hey ho!

Fact Check: Jon Snow

2011-02-17T08:13:00.005Z

A reader alerts me to something worrying from Channel 4 News. Apparently, last night Jon Snow told the nation,

"A year ago a loaf of bread would have cost 75p, today £1, a 25 per cent increase"

In other news....

Update: Apparently, according to comments below, an apology was made about this complete maths failure.

Silvio in the dock.... again?

2011-02-16T07:28:00.003Z

Just a quick comment this morning as I'm rather busy right now, however, I was rather amused to hear the news yesterday about Silvio Berlusconi. What amused me specifically was that one of the charges was apparently having six with an under age prostitute.

The "crime" wasn't having sex with a girl under the age of consent, no it was having sex with a girl who did not meet the legal requirement of 18 to be prostitute. You have to love Italy sometimes huh?

Of course, the most interesting aspect is how they intend to prosecute him. He denies having sex with her and she denies having sex with him, so unless there were some voyeurs watching or we're about to see video evidence (you'd think it would;ve ben leaked already) then it's gonna be tough one surely?

Polly Toynbee does the Lambeth walk (out of the door)

2011-02-15T07:47:00.004Z

Everyone loves bashing the idea of the "Big Society" these days, personally, for me it's quite obvious what it means, and frankly, only a complete moron wouldn't be able to spot it. It's a two words catchphrase to encompass the bit in bold in the following quote that people all too often forget.

And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations.

Simples, no?

Anyhow, I digress. Those that like to bash the "Big Society" are, as you would expect, are Labour and its assorted supporters on the Left. Polly Toynbee being a case in point, calling it "magical thinking", a "big fat lie" and a "busted flush".

You see, Polly says its all about the middle-classes and simply ignores the needs of the people that really need help. Thus, when the Labour-controlled Lambeth Council launched its "John Lewis council" riposte to Cameron's Big Society, the erstwhile Ms Toynbee, a Lambeth resident, got herself appointed to what was eventually called the Lambeth Co-operative Council Citizens' Commission, which is,

Lambeth's big idea for local government.It's about giving people more involvement and control of the services they use and the places where they live by putting council resources in their hands.

Yes, who could possibly question Polly Toynbee's commitment to civic duty in the area that she lives?

You see, Polly was so concerned about her local community, and so committed to showing that the left had a much better answer to local problems she managed to give her all into these wonderful project..... oh... no... wait, I;m wrong, she didn't.

You see, a prole has had the temerity to ask Lambeth Council a question through the Freedom of Information Act. How many meetings - asked the cheeky commoner - of the Lambeth Co-op Citizen's Commission has the passionately caring Polly Toynbee actually attended since her appointment in July 2010? The answer?

One, and then she quit.

Yes, that's right, Polly Toynbee, who cares passionately for her local community and Labour project such as co-operative councils, decided to take on a role and managed to attend just one meeting before quitting saying she had much more important things to do than helping the proles. OK, that may be paraphrased, but this is the actual response from the Council.

"Polly Toynbee was originally part of the Co-operative Council Citizens' Commission and attended one meeting on the 13 October. However, given her work commitments Polly Toynbee was unable to attend other meetings and as a result stood down from the Commission."

Champagne Socialism! Don't you just love it?

Image via Wikimedia Commons

User reviews.... you have to love'em

2011-02-13T08:20:00.003Z

Click Image For Larger Version
Via imgur.com

Conusltant surgeons? Why they're as evil as stockbrokers in 2011!

2011-02-13T06:43:00.003Z

Way back in the mists of time, circa 1995, I was a lowly student and undergraduate studying politics. One of my lecturers (in fact most of them) was an extreme left winger and member of the SWP, and I can't deny that I did enjoy winding the silly old bugger up.

Once such occasion was one of those seminar discussions where the subject of pay and worth came up. The question was put to the room of whether a stock broker was more deserving of their earnings than a highly skilled medical consultant surgeon. After all, one just played with other people's money whilst the other saved lives, yet the former more than likely earned more than latter.

Naturally, the answer (posed in a social science type elective course) was already presumed to be known. The consultant surgeon saves lives, the stockbroker is just an evil capatalist, ergo the consultant should earn more because of his worth to society. That the stockbroker helped generate wealth, which in turn generated growth and the ability to provide jobs wasn't important, he was just scum basically.

I mention this because something odd has happened recently amongst certain quarters of the Left. You see, the stockbroker and/or banker, is not alone in being a bogeyman any more. The consultant surgeon, once a shining example for card-carrying SWP lecturers on the inequity of earnings is now a bastard too. Hell, even GPs are under fire.

The GMB Union for example has a campaign going against changes in the NHS that is targeted not at the changes, but at the GPs on the basis they'll earn more money. Recently we had a story about how consultants in hospitals are earning thousands in overtime, with inevitable questioning about the morality of it and accusations that they're "playing the system"

You see, no longer are doctors and consultants who save people lives on a daily basis wirthy of remuneration for it. That the latter may know how to perform keyhole colorectal surgery and prolong or save the life of someone with colon cancer after years of training and learning is moot.

The bastards earn to much dammit, cut their pay, fuck the patient, what about the worker!

It's a funny old world init?

Who's fault is the "nasty confrontation"?

2011-02-13T06:20:00.002Z

Party politics really doesn't do it hardest to eschew complete bollocks at the best of times, and this week's/month's and ongoing year's narrative on "cuts" is one such example where the scrotum and their contents are out in particular force.

Take, for example, the decision of the Labour-run Manchester Council to take the axe to some of their most important public services. Naturally, for the Council, this is all the fault of the bastard Coalition Government, who, having cut their headline budget figure ones to blame for the closure of public sex locations.... sorry I mean toilets.

Yes, the people of Manchester are to face misery you see because the Council, in deciding where to cut its budgets and manage its decrease in funds, had no choice but to hit the proles as hard as possible, and believe me, this had nothing whatsoever to do with party politics.

It would take a true cynic to think that the Labour-run Council decided to hold a press conference and invite the great and good of the national media with their TV cameras along with the pre-prepared sound bite about Manchester was about to face "unmitigated misery".

Then of course, we have the Shadow Chancellor, Ed Balls, who is now saying that its all David Cameron's fault and that he is creating "nasty confrontation" by "blaming councils" for the decisions councils have chosen to make when it comes to how they to spend, or more accurately, not spend, our money.

No doubt, when he finds himself on the ropes over something in the future (it will happens because it happens to all front line politicians) he'll be saying that his own actions are not his fault but in fact the fault of great-grandparents, for having his grandparents ho went on to have parents and then him.

Of course, Balls is right in a sense, there is "nasty confrontation" ahead, but it's pretty obvious that those confrontations are part of the "nasty" game of party politics that Labour are willing to play, they may not like the accusation of course, but when other Councils facing the same budget restrictions are managing it without bending people over and totally screwing them, you have to wonder about the motives of those that do.

What's more, let's be honest for a moment, it makes sense for them to do it. If Labour are to seek to govern once more, then they need the spending restrictions to appear as bad as possible and they also need to generate the PR to go with such pronouncements of misery. What better place to do it than for Labour controlled councils to swing the axe but blame the Government for their own actions? There are enough idiots out there to believe it.

Rejoice, its a military coup people revolution!

2011-02-12T08:13:00.005Z

Good morning from the Daily Cynic and what a wonderful morning it is as the shit storm continues to brew.

You see, the "people" of Egypt have spoken indeed and forced their dictator President to step down and they're now celebrating the fact that the high-commands of the armed forces have taken the reins of powers guided by the Defence minister.

Of course, let's be clear right now, this was a quiet and largely non-violent revolution of the "people", all coming from wide-ranging strands of society and thought and not dominated by one single ideology other than a desire for change and freedom.

Any suggestion that within the corridors of powers there was a quiet little coup by the military and its political puppet is 100% wrong... got it?

Yes yes, I know that technically the military have taken over the country, and yes, I appreciate that the politician at the top is essentially the minister responsible for the military, but let's not dwell on that, this was about pure "people" power and nothing more.

It was the "people" that brought down the regime, not some quiet behind closed doors chats where a few generals pointed out that perhaps now was the time to go and let them sort the mess out. No, it was all about that changey hopey thing.

The latest fluff about human rights....

2011-02-10T07:43:00.003Z

There is, it seems, a new sacred cow in town and it's not the NHS but is instead "human rights". To simply question the orthodoxy of "human rights" puts you just one step away from calling for the state to be all powerful over people and be allowed to connect their genitals to electrodes.

Of course, this sort reactionary hysteria from the "pro" lobby comes about only in response to the equally reactionary response of the "hang'em and flog'em" lobby who scream about "human rights" being a "criminal's charter" etcetera etcetera.

And yet there is a calm and very sane argument in favour of repealing the Human Rights Act and withdrawing from the 20th Century's European Convention of Human Rights that does not mean you're in favour of tyranny which goes like this.

"Human Rights" are predicated on the assumption that the state exists a priori of its citizenry, and that the state confers on to you "rights" that are yours because you have the quality of being "human".

Now compare that assumption to the assumptions of a document like the US Constitution, which says things like,

"Congress shall make no law...."
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated"
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Notice the subtle difference? Here we have not "rights" conferred by a state that assumes it exists separately from its citizens but rather we have "rights" that come about by stating what the state cannot do.

In the latter the people are sovereign, in the former, the state is sovereign and gives the people rights at its pleasure.

This is why the Human Rights Act should be repealed and Britain should withdraw from the European Convention and draw up its own Bill of Rights that is designed in terms of what the state cannot do, not what the people have been given the right to by a a paternalistic state.

"Prisoners votes" and "criminal's charters" are merely extensive fluff covering the elephant in the room.

Note: No more blogging today, I know I said I would be back next week but had a brief moment in the schedule.

BBIAB....

2011-02-08T09:20:00.002Z

Funny how quick a year goes by, but it has. Just a quick note to say blogging is largely canceled this week due to external forces at work and also Mrs Dizzy going for her yearly in one case, and six monthly in another, cancer follow-up tests.

Back next week. In the meantime you can go and read other blogs.

The Blue Peter Terrorist Handbook

2011-02-07T08:10:00.003Z

Dizzy Jr reached the grand old age of six yesterday. When he opened the Blue Peter annual someone gave him and he said "cool, Blue Peter!" I had the epiphany that he was no longer a toddler, but it was the content of said annual that amused most.

Click Image For Larger Version
Now I presume there must be some copies floating about from the first print run before someone pointed out that perhaps telling kids how to make bombs using at least one bomb popular with terrorists might not be a good idea.

At least they're transparent about wasting money

2011-02-02T14:59:00.003Z

See that little icon over there which you can see in the real world at the Information Commissioner's website.

It cost £585 you know. Yes. Really.

That's 50p per pixel. Nice work if you can get it huh?

The World's Worst Hacker

2011-02-01T15:26:00.002Z

Turn the volume down if the music annoys you. This hacker was caught doing his/her thing not knowing it was inside a honeytrap.

Parliamentary Recess time-delay

2011-02-01T13:05:00.005Z

Nothing like the joy of Christmas and a Parliamentary recess to cause a time-delay huh? Published in Written Answers yesterday, January 31st 2011,

Caroline Flint: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government how many local authorities have notified his Department that they do not plan to organise events to mark the festival of Christmas in 2010.

Andrew Stunell: Local authorities are not required to tell my Department how they are celebrating Christmas as this is a local matter. However, the Secretary of State has received approximately 60 letters supporting his stance on the celebration of Christmas.

Only a month and a bit late!

Perhaps Caroline Flint should've spoken to avid Doctor Who fan Tom Harris and asked if he had a spare Tardis she could use.

Are you sitting comfortably?... they are

2011-02-01T12:13:00.002Z

There has been quite a bit written about the Audit Commission over the last few months since it's demise was announced, some of which has been supportive and some which has been dismissive of its virtues. If you're not sure what the Audit Commission is meant to do, this is what its website says,

The Audit Commission is an independent watchdog, driving economy, efficiency and effectiveness in local public services to deliver better outcomes for everyone..... We appoint auditors to provide assurance and promote value for taxpayers’ money across local government, health, housing, community safety, fire and rescue and other public services.

All very straightforward indeed. Value for money for the taxpayer is important, you won;t get any arguments from me on that one. So is it appropriate that, in the last 12 months, the Audit Commission spent £53,507.64 on just 222 office chairs? (that's an average of £241 per chair before you ask).

The "Omni Swivel chair 4812" at just over £850 a piece better be comfortable for the money, and the two hush chairs on sled legs (pictured right) are surely a snip at £840 per unit. Clearly there is one person in the Audit Commission who must have a bad back or something as they were bought the RH Logic 300 at a reduced price of £525.63.

It does make me wonder sometimes who actually audits the auditors for value for money.

So much for a transparent House of Commons

2011-02-01T11:12:00.003Z

It's well known that during the build-up to the Expenses Scandal, it was the House of Commons and the Speaker of the time that fought tooth-and-nail to avoid a light to shine on the expenses and allowance spending of our Lords and Masters. Thankfully, as a result of a leak it didn't matter anyway.

Whilst it's unlikely that this was a driving force behind the desire by the Tory element of the Coalition to establish the principle that Government department should be publishing their spending on anything over £500, it was probably a factor, hence many department are now telling us, in raw data format at least, what taxpayers money they're pissing up the proverbial.

Well, all except the House of Commons of course. You wouldn't expect that institution, often of lofty "born to rule" arrogance, to take transparency with your money seriously would you? You see, they don't, as, when asked what single tender contracts they'd agreed since May 2010 the response from the House of Commons Commission was as follows,

The House's central contract database contains information on six single tender contracts awarded since May 2010, namely:
Additional access control
Supply, delivery and installation of security screening equipment
Anti-fragmentation film in 14 Tothill street
Modifications to the House of Commons Chamber sound equipment and supply of specialist radio microphones
Supply of curtaining fabric
Replacement of broken glass roof domes, Moncrieff's Restaurant
None of these contracts was above the EU public procurement threshold for supplies and services which currently stands at approximately £101,000.

Single tender contracts under £25,000 within individual House Departments are not recorded on the central contract database, and it is not known how many of these there have been.

You didn't expect them to tell you how much it cost to protect them from the rabble throwing stones at their windows did you?

Will not wearing bandannas stop stabbings?

2011-01-31T08:52:00.005Z

As per a teenager going crazy with a gun, I don't particularly like Mondays. Not because, you understand, as a result of some errant angst against the world, but rather because Monday's so often bring with them stupid politics and stupid laws, today being no exception.

Apparently, from today the Police will have new powers to tackle feral gangs which will include the power to ban people from wearing "colours" such as a particular bandanna that associates them with a particular gang. Now, I ask you, have you ever in your life heard of anything quite so stupid?

After all, at least if you know a gang all wear the same bandanna you'll know when one of them is walking down the street towards and prepare yourself for the inevitable mugging at knife point. Now though, you won't know, what genius.

However, I digress, remember the absolute furore when someone suggested that we should ban the burka? People from all sides argued how stupid it was. On the civil liberty side it was quite rightly argued that banning certain clothes was absurd, and yet, here we are proposing to ban certain clothes and it's all about tackling crime so it's OK?

If you want to tackle the problem of gang crime it;s quite simple. Arrest them, convict them, and jail them. Don't ban them from wearing certain clothes. Not only is it an affront on basic liberty, but more so it won;t change the fact that some people are vicious violent bastards.

Are we seriously expected to believe that a gang member will wake up one morning and think "oh no, I can't commit a crime today because I;m not wearing my colours".

Note: The title of this post should be a candidate for John Rentoul's "questions to which the answer is no"