A shocking state of affairs!

It appears theres been a few comments in threads and on Twitter in recent days asking me if I'be decided to blog again because of a sudden upsurge in post frequency. The simple answer to that is that I never decided to stop really. Ive just been busy.

I'm still busy to be honest but sometimes there's a need to use this medium over the limited alternative of Twitter, so you can all look forward to some light fisking over the summer of some of the new shining lights of the more obsessive political blogosphere.

Anyhow, on to important business. Its come to my attention that there's been some sort of public inquiry going on over the last few months that's got many people very excited about very mundane everyday things it seems.

For example, it has come to light that people in business have, in the past, spoken to politicians about their business interests. Sometimes these very senior corporate people have even had dinner with very senior politicians! It's corruption of the highest order!

Only yesterday it came to light for example, that the Government has had 23 separate meetings with Google since June 2010. This was revealed by the Daily Mail who quite rightly said that the Google were over-stepping the mark with this relationship.

One presumes Daily Mail said this because they felt like a cheated wife as their 34 meetings with the Government in the same period were not as exclusive as they liked - not that those meetings were anything like the same as the Google meetings, Google are "bloody foreigners" after all.

There's also the small issue that a certain person from the media business is going to be charged, not with voicemail interception but rather perverting the course of justice. A juicy show trail is coming, and we shall all stand and shout hatred at our telescreens throughout, of that I have no doubt.

As it happens, I find myself wondering what the point of a trail even is. After all, the person has already been found guilty have they not by the aforementioned obsessives. Commentary, and the infamous "court of public opinion" has already made clear that they are, without doubt, absolutely, up to their neck in shit, and part of a large mafia type organisation.

Yes, I really did say Mafia-type organisation. True there have bene no killing, no horses heads or any such thing like that, instead this has been much much worse. These people have shared Rioja together! The Ndrangheta have nothing on this lot - you mark my words.

Anyhow, off you all run, it's Sunday, the sun will soon be shining.

Denis Macshane calls his constituents uncultured - probably

This one amused me this morning. Nothing like insulting the (more than likely) vast majority of the people that voted for you huh?

phil·is·tine/ˈfiləˌstēn/

Noun:
A member of a non-Semitic (perhaps originally Anatolian) people of southern Palestine in ancient times.
A person who is hostile or indifferent to culture and the arts, or who has no understanding of them.

Or perhaps he was saying only Semites are well read?

Chris Heaton-Harris - centrist credentials laid bare

A shocking tale of unsoundness from the weekend comes from Chris Heaton-Harris, the MP for Daventry.

You can't get anymore middle-of-the-road than that right?

Let's hope he wasn't tweeting whilst driving though (or in a Nissan Micra or I might have to throw something at something).

Leveson website fail

Bless those little judicial web monkeys - their varnish web accelerator isn't going very fast this morning if you want to read the written evidence submissions.

So if you want read Rebekah Brooks' words you're going to have to wait until someone technical wakes up. Once that happened you are then free to be outraged at the shocking news a CEO from a large corporate company spoke to politicians about decisions that impacted on their business.

Blocking porn: just another step on the road to slavery

Here's a question for the boys (and possibly girls), do you remeber whne you saw your first bit of porn? Depending on your age it was either a dodgy magazine, an equally dodgy video (where you had to fiddle withthe vertical hold and skip past the bits where the tape had stretched due constant pausing and rewinding), or it was some flash movie online. You were probably also a teenager I imagine.

Today though, we live in terrible and desperate times when it comes to porn. As anyone reading the populist press will be aware, or anyone watching certain pious Tories wishing to impose their values on others, ever child is pretty much having porn pumped into their line vision whilst they're eyelids are pinned open. Every night they go to their bedrooms with their laptop, webcam, a packet of ham and snorkel like Jay in the Inbetweeners (I'll let you fill in the gapos if you've not seen it) and engage in the most base debauchery.

Our children are literally one step away from being rapists... well that's the general implication anyway, and so something must be done, and that something is to introduce blocking of all porn online and make people wear badges that say "I like to watch porn on'tinternet" if they errr "like to watch porn on'tinternet".

OK, so they're not really going to make them wear badges, but if it were to happen they might as well, because you're going to have to request that you want the "good stuff". The thing is, this is a monumentally stupid and ridiculous idea for so many reasons.

• Exaggeration of the problem: I've already alluded to this, but does anyone seriously beleive that all the kids are busy "banging one out" to hardcore porn online every night? "Banging one out" maybe, that's natural after all, but I've not really seen much more than selectively chosen anecdotes, and how they're any different to the glorious VHS days is beyond me.
• Learning the wrong things about sex: This is the classic old chestnut that suggests if you see porn as a kid you're going to think it's perfectly normal for a girl to let you cum on her face, engage in anal sex and/or whatever other weird thing floats your boat. That argument has been around longer than Internet porn. It didn't come to fruition then, it's unlikely to now, mainly because of the reality of the previous point.
• You'll end up blocking legitimate content: The reality is, unless we go down the route of "legislative approved website" (more on that in a bit), you're inevitably going to block some content that is not porn however good you think the code logic might be. The classic example is the URL containing the word "scunthorpe".
• You'll end up not blocking illegitimate content: This is the same as the previous point in reverse obviously. I for example can recall a certain high street mobile phone retailer who's corporate network blocked the Agent Provocateur website (because staff shouldn't be looking at lingerie models) but didn't block the lingerie section of the M&S website.
• "They're" going to have to watch you: Not that they;re not watching already some might say, but honestly, if you're going to block content that means you have inspect traffic and that means you have watch what everyone is doing. Blocked content is little more than full-scale tracking via the backdoor.
• False sense of security: This flows from the previous two points. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Once you make the claim to "block" something and then you inevitably fail to do so, it is only a matter of time before some company gets sued with the claim that have not protected the children. The real failure here though will be those who think that the promise to block is in anyway cast-iron and so palm off their personal responsibility towards what their children see to the Government and the law.
• The DH Lawrence Conundrum: Way back in the mists of time there was a book called The Rainbow. It had sex in it. It had lots of sex in it, and boy did it upset some people. So much so in fact that it was banned and all copies burned out of necessity to protect the masses from such filth.
• Do you want Government approved websites?: Go to China. Seriously, if we, as a supposed liberal democracy, take the first step on the road to blocked Internet access by default then we might as pack up the whole thing now, scrap elections and install a Politburo. Sounds alarmist I know, but this all comes down to what I and other call the Stalin Test. It's an easy game to play. When making a judgement about liberty infringement ask yourself the questions: "Would Stalin have liked this? Would Stalin have found it useful?". If the answer is yes then it's worth pausing. Remember, just because you trust today's politicians doesn't mean you should assume the trust and good faith of tomorrows. Building the infrastructure to enable an oppressed state only requires an enabling act to bring into being.

In the words of Pitt the Younger: "necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." 

FactCheck: The "No More Lies" Boris Attack Video (light fisking)

Oh dear, an allegedly "non-aligned" group have released an attack video against Boris Johnson according to Liberal Conspiracy.

Now I love a good bit of negative campaigning but this one is pretty shoddy I have to say. True it's get the tone and music ambience right when portraying its theme of "lies" by Johnson, but it does have a few glaring flaws.

• All its data used to contradict the quotes are unattributed. They should have had some tiny point font to at least show where the figures were coming from.
• The first charge is on Police numbers. Boris says "under this mayoralty there will be no cuts in the Police. The video says he is lying and there are 2,132 fewer Police since March 2010. Note the choice of the date? What we have here, ironically enough, is the maxim that there are "lies, damned lies and statistics". You see, as pointed out by Full Fact,

The MPA figures show that, when Mr. Johnson entered office in May 2008, police officer numbers stood at 31,398 (for the 2007-08 financial year). In 2008-09 this number rose by 1,145. In 2009-10 numbers further rose by 717, although in 2010-11 they fell by 801.

Along with projections from a 'Policing London Business Plan' published in March, the numbers are graphed as follows:
The approximate number of officers expected for the 2011-12 financial year is put at 32,510, which will also be at the end of Mr. Johnson's term in office. Compared to his inheritance of 31,398, this would mean police officer numbers will have increased by 1,112 under Mr. Johnson's premiership.

• Next up we have "crime". Boris says "crime is down in London". The video says he's lying and says "knife crime is up". This is bit like a farmer saying "the yield of apples from the orchard is down" and a farm hand saying "you liar, the number of apples on this one tree has gone up". You know what? Crime overall in London might be up, Boris may indeed be lying. However if you're going to accuse him of doing so at least use the right data to make your point!
• On to the congestion charge. Boris says he would not allow it to go up. They say he increased it by 25%. This is the one true thing so far. He increased it by £2, from £8 to £10. My guess is that this is why the producers claim to be "unaligned", you see, it would look a bit silly from a green point of view if they aligned themselves and were then arguing against a rise of something that is in line with general environmental policies.
• Affordable homes is next. Boris says there will be "50,000 affordable homes by May next year". He doesn't say what year. The video says there have only been "56 affordable home started building between April and September". They don't say what April and September. Let's take a quick look at a random council though. According to the Royal Borough of Greewnich's affordable housing and regeneration web pages, "some 1,198 new homes were built last year". Where exactly did this random "56" number come from then?
• Finally we have transport fares. Boris, being interviewed specifcally about bendy-buses and their replacement, he is asked if he can financially make that change. He says "I think we can... and I think we can do it without increasing fares for London". The video then points out that fares have gone up a whopping 47% - that's about 50p for most bus journey's incidentally, but saying it in percentage terms sounds much worse but I digress. You see, the video makers have buggered up again here. Instead of finding a generic clip of Boris saying that he will not increase fares period, they've found one where he says he doesn't think he needs to increase fares for a specific project to be possible. That doesn't mean he can't increase fares for other things, much as the previous Mayor increased fares multiple times for multiple things.

So there we have it. An attack video about "lies" that amusingly enough is mostly full of errr... lies. Five specific claims, and only one that can in anyway be described as accurate.

Actually, I'm being unfair, they're not so much lies as statements that, more often than not, are juxtaposed against other statements that are about different things.

I think the more appropriate word might be disingenuous, and that is why the BBC, LBC and the Evening Standard, who Sunny laments, have not pushed such things, because if they did, they'd be hauled over the coals for it.

Verdict: Must try harder

Was the "boiler tax" dreamt up during a crack-party?

I know, I know, it's rare to even see me post more than a few characters on Twitter these days, but occasionally 140 individual letters/number just doesn't cut it for what I want to say.

You see, I've just read an article (admittedly in the Daily Mail) that is claiming that the Coalition plans to introduce what appears to be mandatory planning permission for getting a new boiler. The ideas goes like this.

If you want a new boiler you will have to ask the Council to let you get one and then if the Council decides your home is not energy efficient enough they'll tell you you can't unless you fork out hundreds of pounds on other energy saving efficiencies first, such as loft insulation, cavity wall insulation etc.

There are so many absurdities with this I can only conclude that Coalition ministers and their civil servants were having some sort of crack-smoking party when they came up with it.

For a start, what happens if the boiler breaks in a family home during the Christmas period. Are they to be expected to freeze their bollocks off whilst they wait for Council officials to sober up and answer the planning request?

What's more, if someone is spending their own money on a new boiler (which will invariably be more energy efficient than the old one anyway), why should the Government force them to further spend their own money or take out Government backed loans to put themselves in debt?

The plan is so obviously going to fail even if they did try to implement it. Firstly, it is a gift to their political opponents who will point out that they're attacking poor pensioners and families with extra cost, and you know it will only be a matter of time before someone dies of hypothermia because their boiler broke and they couldn't afford to get the extra work done.

Secondly, people will just start paying plumbers and the like cash-in-hand for work and boilers that go under the radar of the official snooping Council workers.

Diane Abbott and stupid people......

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"

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

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".