Orwell wrote a warning but the Labour Party have mistaken it for an instruction manual!
tough on freedom and tough on the causes of freedom
I am not particularly clever or wise but I will express my opinions as I see fit. You are welcome to read them but you do not have to. Click the back-button now if you cannot handle strong opinions (and language), otherwise - welcome to my domain. I apologise in advance for hastily written entries that may be riddled with spelling and grammatical errors (especially if Paul Lutus is reading).
Do not miss the current winner of The Most Important Post on This Blog. It is the anti GAWD climate warming hoax exposé. The mainstream media and western establishment does not want you to read this.
All content on this site is © ingratebriton.org 2005,2006,2007 & 2008 all rights reserved.
World War III (the energy war) has been declared
Posted Monday July 14, 2008
The UN (via the IPCC), the G8 and their Kyoto/Bali puppets have declared war on the global poor and on our future prosperity and advancement.
All the most powerful nations on earth are conspiring to control the distribution of energy. Any excuse for war will do, wherever the target nation has significant energy (or development related) resources.
The anthropegenic global warming lie spread by the media propaganda machines (apparantly now completely in the control of the various states) has stageringly quickly been accepted by the masses. The masses will probably never spot the connections and protest at the cost of each war (in taxes and lives) as they see fit. The fact that the green movement too are so easily manipulated and used by the war-mongers has a certain delicious irony.
Why are we having to fight over energy? To maintain the power distribution status quo. This is the new cold-war; a hot-war (or warm-war) if you will. In order for those of us riding the prosperity wagon to remain in front we have to fend off hitch-hiking free loader nations, apparently. Unfortunately, because this tactic was thought up by an inept spook or military drone, it will be self-defeating.
By taxing us to the hilt, restricting energy use and starving 'supporting' economies, they turn back our own developmental clock and risk handing it all to our perceived enemies on a plate. The rapidly rising Asian economies and fence walking Russia are laughing all the way to a super-power future as we sink up to our necks in a mire of unnecessary bull shit and expense.
The big gamble, with all our lives, will be an inevitable power block stand off. The rising powers on one side, who have not bought into the global warming hype, controlling a significant proportion of resources; and on the other us, the old guard, willing to go nuclear, I've no doubt.
Climate bullies out-classed
Posted Wednesday June 4, 2008
I have been very busy recently finding very little time for everything, especially this blog. Mostly, though, I have come close to giving up battering my head against the CO2 wall. The green lobby has friends in all the lowest places and, in its deluded narcisistic state, will not stop until humanity has been brought to its knees.
Luckily others are bravely soldiering on, not least those stalwart fellows over at Climate Resistance. Their well written exposure of green ideology put me in mind of Prof Brignal's marvelous essay on the religion of science Number Watch.
Keep up the good work chaps. The truth will out! Eventually!
Reprive for Lewis - temporary?
Posted Wednesday April 23, 2008
The Scottish Parliament's decision to deny permission for the Lewis wind farm development has been notably under-reported in the media. It was going to be Europe's largest wind farm after all.
I have already said why I think it is misguided and you all know why I think it is unnecessary so I won't get out of my pram about it here. I just want there to be one more reference to it on web the spiders' databases.
The Greenies must be in a bit of a lather about it. They like the cutesy cuddly twiry wirly 'renewables', despite their pointlessness. They needn't worry overly much though. The company behind this plan have lots of money and even more lawers and Scottish politicians have no history of much back bone. It ain't over, sadly. 'T will be an odd alliance, Greenies battling to destroy Lewis in order to 'Save the Planet'.
All hail VirtualBox and its creators.
Posted Wednesday April 16, 2008
Innotek (now owned by Sun) have a product of enormous importance and significance. I have no doubt that VMware and other virtualization software shares some or all of VirtualBox's capabilities but surely they can't all be this easy.
I am talking about the USB capabilities of the closed source, but still free, version 1.5.6. The virtual machine can talk directly to the host's USB ports allowing you to install on XP (for example) the manufacturer's XP drivers for printers and scanners and anything else!
Download a copy of the closed source version appropriate to your distribution (also download the easy to follow manual). Run the necessary installer. Run VirtualBox and set up the basic environment for the operating system/s you want.
To set up USB and filters first run 'VBoxManage list usbhost' from a terminal to get the appropriate IDs, although this can also be done from within the machine menu hierarchy (doesn't seem to give as much specificity here). You will need to have the device attached and switched at this point (I eventaully realised). Under 'Settings/USB' add each device you need and fill in the details. And away you go.
Start the machine, install your client OS and install the drivers at the appropriate time.
I could use my printer but I couldn't use its full capabilities or manage its resources from Linux and I couldn't use my scanner at all. Now, using a folder shared between client and host, I can print in a linux app. to PDF or some other compatible format; open the very fast virtual XP machine and print it, perfectly. I can scan in XP, save to shared folder and use it imediately in Linux.
Brilliant, thank you Innotek. Now all I need to be able to ditch the Windows box is the ability to talk directly to PCI devices. Of course I have had to install a fully licensed XP in the virtual box to acheive all of this this. I have not had to take advantage of the fascinating post I stumbled across called something like - 'How to bypass WPA (Windows Activation) on Windows XP. - by FittMunken'.
addendum:
and even if I had followed Fittmunken's advice, it does not work (alledgedly); after 30 days time is still up. I imagine though that if I take advantage of VirtualBoxManage's ability to offset the virtual machine's clock, the problem will go away ;)
Tux 2 - Beastie 0
Posted Wednesday April 16, 2008
Just a short final note on the FreeBSD saga. Last time I boldly declared that my second outing with FreeBSD (having discovered my mistakes) had resulted in a successfull Beastie on my intended home file server.
Unfortunately, I've removed it now and replaced it with Linux. Having configured drives and installed successfully for the umpteenth time I had assumed all was as intended. However, when I set out to set up some network shares I discovered that my carefully arranged mount points had vanished. I have a large RAID array no longer mounted on /home and another disk no longer where I put it.
I don't care that I may have done something peculiar when I finished the install followed by nothing other than set up X and a 'shutdown -h now'. I don't care that I went through a slicing and dicing process that left my drives correctly prepared and then missed something strange I had not had to do on all the other installs, which did not cause this problem. I don't care that the FreeBSD licence is so generous.
It is not ready for real desktop use, end of. DesktopBSD is too much of a sheep in wolf's clothing to try risking that either. There is no question, in my mind, that Linux is far more robust for rugged day to day use. I just have to overcome my terror of finding my way through its labyrinthine network settings inconsistencies.
War declared on humanity, by little green wo/men
Posted Tuesday April 8, 2008
The green movement might as well be aliens. They are winning the current round of their campaign to starve the world's poor and stifle all development and progress. The very progress that gave them the privilege, to do so, that they now enjoy.
Take away all that they hate and you take away their ability to bully the rest of us into mindless submission, worshiping at their hemp sandaled feet. So maybe we should bide our time, fellow advanced (top of the food chain) beings, and wait until they think they've won. Being the species we are, anarchy will ensue and the peace loving greenies will be the first to be squashed. Then we can repair the damage they have done and get on with being human, and progress technologically to beyond the stars.
The planet will be fine, as it always has been and the process of natural selection that got us to this point will continue to roll its dice. Those creatures and plants that can survive in the world of our mutual making will be the antecedants of whatever follows after the next real natural disaster finishes off humanity.
The world will change shape, unecognisably, and the flora and fauna will evolve beyond our imaginings and the religions of old (incluing the bitter, twisted and poisened religion of 21st century science) will not even be visible in any distant archaeological record. The strange objects floating in space might give visitors a bit of a clue about what used to be on this little blue planet but they will find little else.
Because, we truely don't matter and in their distorted morality, narcisistic worshipers of 'environmentalism' have forgotten that we are part of that very same environment. We are natural and, by extension, so is everything we do, absolutely everything we do. Many species of the world create environments, which if they succeeded in becoming dominant, would have a much wider implication for all other life. Why should we ban ourselves from this genetic imperitive? Nothing we acheive can possibly be above and beyond the nature we belong to. Only a weak cowardly tendency to desparately need there to be something bigger than us (because we fear death) allows us to believe that we are bigger than the rest of nature. We are not, except that currently we appear to be a dominant species. That won't last for ever.
So bring it on green bullies and weak politicians, I will survive the anarchy your policies and taxes will lead to. When we have to literally fight for scraps of food and shelter, I won't hesitate to beat the living shite out of you. I might even stop being a vegetarian and eat you! Green is good food, yum.
Tux 1 - 0 Beastie
Posted Friday April 4, 2008
I suppose I should continue my public self-flagellation and report progress on the software installation front.
Linux is winning on the desktop at the moment but only after a graphics card swap and DVI/VGA cable swap. The hardware change would, most likely have solved my problems with whatever OS I had installed but the OS of the moment is PCLinuxOS 2007 (gnome version - KDE is too bloated and Windoze-like for my liking). 2008 is now available but repository updates to 2007 amount to the same thing, I'm told.
PCLinuxOS is based on Mandrake but is slimmer and faster and cleverer, in my experience. Having swapped graphics cards from ATI (curse them) to Nvidia (bless them), I had to uninstall all flgrx and ATI drivers to make sure there would be no confusion and conflicts. Then the dreaded reboot and expected xorg.conf manual command line tweaking to get going again. But, no my fellow geeks PClinuxOS, unpromted, stepped into the breach, recognised the problem and presented a very helpful utility to guide through the repair and installed all the necessary new drivers.
It just worked. I now have a shiny new PCLinuxOS (Gnome) desktop running Compiz beautifully with all its wibbly-wobbly, rotating cube, event effects bling bringing a flush of green to the gills of Apple Mac worshippers everywhere.
So I have a windoze box up and running a couple bits of hardware Linux and FreeBSD won't drive, a FreeBSD server and a PCLinuxOS main desktop. Just got to get them talking to each other now!
Yipeeee, La Nina rescues mankind shock!
Posted Friday April 4, 2008
Here's a welcome report from the BBC, acknowledging the possibility that global warming is not real. Get me a glass of water, somebody please (if the 'environment' can spare it), I'm feeling more than a little light-headed.
It turns out that there are natural forces at work, which may just be influencing the weather and climate. I remain to be convinced but I am willing to wait and see what scientific research might conclude after some extensive and expensive research, or mathematical modelling hocus-pocus.
addendum (BBC booted back on message - you can sleep soundly):
OK, you will wonder what I'm warbling on about if you click the link above because the BBC wimps have been bullied into changing their tune. The Register has all the details. We're truely fucked when a whimpering coward can so easily shout down attempts to acurately report a story, which so badly needs reporting!
This is worse than the BBC's mis-reporting of the alledged Royal tantrum that never was.
A nifty now you see it, now you don't comparison between the BBC versions is now available on the American Digest site.
FreeBSD - et tu bruté
Posted Thursday March 13, 2008
OK I wrote a couple weeks ago, with some enthusiasm, about my upcoming FreeBSD experiment.
As I say in the original piece, I did quite some research and I have many years experience with this kind of thing and after a couple silly mistakes, I did indeed have Beasty up and running. I even had X configured for my esoteric wide-screen and flaky graphics card with Fluxbox installed and Firefox surfing happily.
Unfortunately, I failed to set up a software raid for my '/home' partition and caused a crash and when FreeBSD crashes it does it in style. I also crashed it trying to cp (copy) from a EXT3 Linux drive to my new home folder. If you scroll down to the last line in the manual page for copy, you will see why. When FreeBSD crashes (7.0-RELEASE on my hardware - standard install) it starts a never ending cycle of file system checks, file dumps and reboots that really do seem never to have any hope of ending. I left it going for more than 6 hours once before trashing the system and re-installing. each re-boot cycle was taking 6 to 15 minutes.
I reinstalled from scratch at least 6 times and after finally getting everything as I wanted it and re-booting normally it erroneously claimed that '/home' had not been correctly dismounted and proceeded to go through the interminable cycle again. ENOUGH! The towel slapped soggily into the ring with a snotty thud.
I had also by now tried and failed to install DesktopBSD on another machine but it no-likey its graphics hardware. To be honest only one version of Ubuntu and Mint ever did like that machine. At this moment I have only one machine working properly (woe is me) - a fecking Windoze box!
Where to now? I have started trying to install Linux distributions, one after the other, from magazine covers on the most difficult box with no success so far. Ubuntu/Xubuntu/Mint and maybe Suse should work; I'll let you know. It has not all been in vain because those FreeBSD installs taught me much, as did my preliminary research. I have more confidence that I can solve the Linux networking problems and will enjoy getting under the hood. I am frustrated by the Beasty. It seems to me that a system designed to reliably run servers should not crash when attempting to copy files, no matter how corrupt the file system. It should not forget to do something during a legitimate reboot that corrupts a partition and when it attempts to repair any damage it should indicate what, why, how and if when it is doing it.
addendum:
For all you innocents who stumbled on my blog while Googling for FreeBSD, I should just not that the 'final straw' above was my own fault. A little further reading of the excellent manual revealed that despite advice to the contrary (found via Google), 'reboot' is NOT and alias for 'shutdown -r now' in BSD. It does not cause all the proper termination sgnals to be sent. This means that on rebooting the system will find file system errors. ALWAYS USE the 'shutdown' command stoopid!
Friday entertainment
Posted Friday February 22, 2008
Nothing more than a link to a funny story (scroll down the page).
FreeBSD will save me, surely
Posted Friday February 22, 2008
I have been a Linux hobbyist for many years. I have installed many Linux distributions on dedicated machines or dual-booted with Windoze.
I have seen and been honoured to lay my hands on a Mac (OS X) and thought it was pretty, if a little flimsy. For a couple of years my main desktop OS of choice has been Ubuntu (for the last 6 months the Minty derived fork). Over the years I have been almost as frustrated with RedHat, SUSE, Mandriva and Ubuntu as I have been with the MS beast.
The trouble with Open Source is that there is no commercial motive to support it, on the part of hardware manufactures; why should they? The Open Source movement produces great software that runs a great deal of the world's modern communications and PCs but it is primarily driven by people who don't 'play' with computers. The volunteers and others who work on the Linux kernel, for example, want reliable security systems and databases and highly technical projects to work. They don't care about the frilly stuff most people use desktop PCs for.
Thus: Linux, Unix, Wine etc are always a half-year or many years behind because they can never support all the hardware that the commercial boys and girls can. Trying to persuade more hardware makers to cooperate is laudable but always ultimately doomed, if there's no profit in it. Unifying hardware standards so that manufacturers were compelled to make driver interfaces easy to implement would help but won't happen.
The current well documented miserable failings of MS's Vista are helping push a few more people to a Compiz enabled KDE/Gnome environment but only those willing to spend a lot of time and money making careful hardware choices aimed at a specific alternative to MS.
There are millions of people like me with hardware, at least three years old with no intention of replacing it until it breaks, that want to use it in a modern, secure and reliable software environment. We won't be buying Vista or its successor. So where does that leave me?
I have been using Linux Mint for about six months and everything worked straight out of the box (on a machine built by me for Linux) and it is still fine, if a little slower than it was on day one but:
I still can't unravel the mess that is local networking. Something always goes wrong and has on every version of Linux I have used. It is an arcane black art, which has never been fully documented in any easily accessible form, after years of searching. In addition to my minty desktop PC, I have a Windoze box solely for making full use of a high quality sound device and making full use of my printer and scanner. I also have a specially built box stuffed with storage that should be a file server, internet gateway and (just for fun) domain controller but I have never had them all talking to each other properly.
What am I going to do about it? Install FreeBSD. I have gone back to basics, recalling undergraduate days in front of a Unix workstation, and read extensively about the forthcoming 7 release of FreeBSD, which I did briefly install a couple of years ago on my underused server (version 5, I think). I am still reading the 1000 page 'Handbook' and am plowing through 'FreeBSD 6 unleashed' ready for the big day.
I have realised that relying on the Linux distribution makers or Microsoft to look after my welfare is folly. I have to take control and responsibility for my hardware by installing a system I will have to make an effort to understand. The time I take to do that will save me many headaches in the future, I hope! It will be no walk in the park but my reading so far assures me that it is not that hard, just short-term time consuming.
I will still have to keep my XP machine until a miracle happens but that is OK. My successfully set up server will help protect it from itself and the stupidity and carelessness of the Redmond ne'er-do-wells.
Seachd - The Inaccessible Pinnacle
Posted Tuesday February 19, 2008
The first Gaelic language film to go on general release finally reached our not so local art house cinema last night. Having an interest in all matters Gaeldom, we shot off in the car to see it. We were fully aware that our thirty mile round trip would cost the environment dear but decided to offset the carbon by not having children.
This is good cinema and I recommend anyone with an interest in good story-telling gets the DVD, released next week. It is a good telling of a story about story telling and about grief within a small family. All the performances, from the small cast, are of a quality rarely seen on celluloid and sometimes only on stage. It feels like watching a play with hints of an Ingmar Bergman cinematic style.
Angus is eleven years old and has moved in with his grandparents following the tragic death of his parents in a climbing accident. His grandfather tells apparent tall-tales, proverbially but with a believably implied realism. His angry grandson rejects them but can't resist them in his quest for truth about his parents' death.
The story has slight flaws. Angus's siblings are inexplicably absent from much of the story and the return of the perpetrator of the accident that killed his parents is unnecessarily messy. The death of the grandmother, at such an important time in the boy's life, was all but skipped over. I also found the external views of a very large house jarred a little with the small internal sets.
Skye is beautiful and filmed lovingly with no sentimentality. The same is true of the score and the very real Ceilidh scene. All in all, it's a very realistic portrayal of gaelic island life told with considerable depth and humour. Only miss it if you are shallow enough to use the 'don't like subtitles' excuse.
Meyer refines CSS global reset
Posted Monday February 18, 2008
Eric Meyer has been a champion of the global reset solution to some browser inconstancy problems for some time now. His latest version, which I recommend all page developers use, is now on a dedicated page at meyerweb.
If you are new to (X)HTML and CSS or if you have been burying your head in the sand for a decade, you will not understand the need for a global CSS reset. Meyer explains all on his site but if by some miracle of googlonics you come here first, I'll waffle a little on the subject here.
Not all browsers are born equal and not all browsers are Internet Explorer, which may come as a surprise to some of you. If it does, I recommend you go to Mozilla's Firefox site and download a more secure, more standards compatible and more extensible browser right now!
Browser developers have over the years, with varying degrees of success, failed miserably to fully and reliably implement all of the W3C's HTML and CSS definitions in their page rendering engines. Originally this was because they simply did not care. They were too busy competing with one another with non-standard HTML capabilities that they all but ignored the specifications. More recently they, some faster and more effectively than others, have started to smell the coffee.
However, none of them get it completely right, not least in how they apply CSS to a page element where no CSS is defined for the page. i.e. where you haven't specified a value. Some apply defaults correctly according to W3C specifications, while others don't. The only way to be sure that every element on the page behaves from scratch in a predictable way, across all browsers, is to include a style sheet with all elements actively set to a particular value. You can then confidently fiddle with the CSS knowing that the remaining browser differences are not caused by hidden default values being randomly applied.
So copy the reset CSS from Meyer's page and put it at the top of your site's main CSS file or @import it. Then apply specific styles as you normally would confident that anything you don't style will behave consistently across browsers.
BOHF
Posted Friday February 15, 2008
This is nothing more than a link to the latest BOFH episode on The Register because it is a classic; indeed, a return to the bad old days. The only question for me is this - why is BOFH not a movie yet?
Ratatouille
Posted Friday February 15, 2008
My significant other and I went to the local arts cinema to see Ratatouille this week. We didn't get a chance when it was in the main cinemas last year. The first interesting thing is that there was not one child in an audience of about 150. I imagine a very different atmosphere in the local Vue before Christmas.
Anyhoo, what did I think? I thought it was worth commenting on, as was the short before it. Lifted is its name and it is a small work of genius as so many of the Pixar shorts have been. A very funny, laugh all the way through, story about a young apprentice green blob alien in a giant spaceship being marked on his/her/its abduction skills. I'll say no more but recommend the Ratatouille DVD for this alone (if it's on it).
The main event is a very watchable, thoroughly entertaining romp through the culinary streets of Paris. It is not perfect and not up to Pixar's own Monsters Inc standard but worth seeing. It has flaws.
The decision to limit (or the financial constraint on) the rendering of the human characters detracts from the action a little. The curious lack of a female love interest for Remy, the main rat character, is strange, especially in the 60s Parisian setting. The complete lack of any felines is bewildering. The main human character is an unnecessarily slap-stick caricature or is a lazy writer's mechanism for explaining the entertaining but absurd physical gyrations the rest of the film relies on.
The Peter O'Toole Anton Ego food critic character steals the show, both in animation and voice acting terms, marvelous.
The streets of Paris are stylishly and lovingly drawn, not least in the scooter chase scene. But none of it is up to the creative mastery of any Studio Ghibli film or the magical Belleville Rendez-Vous. The intended audience is not the same in most of these films but are nonetheless valid comparisons in the art of animation. The same is true of the story telling.
I still recommend it though. If Belleville Rendez-Vous gets five stars then this deserves 3, which makes it well worth seeing.
Scottish drivers to destroy planet, claim WWF
Posted Monday February 11, 2008
In reporting the great news that all tolls have finally been removed from Scottish roads, the BBC have yet again managed to embarrass themselves. They just couldn't resist the opportunity to quote the WWF's claim that this will contribute to man-made Global Warming.
That will be because of the huge increase in traffic taking the shorter routes across the now free bridges instead of driving the long way round, I presume. Or will it be because of the significant increase in business and tourists, as claimed by the SNP, who stayed away before because they couldn't afford the £1 charge; and they say Scots are tight!
Conning the Daft Classes
Posted Friday February 8, 2008
British classrooms are full of poorly educated, over-tested underachievers. It says so here. Of course, they are not wrong but what is really going on with our children? It will not surprise you to know that I am going to enlighten you because I know this is the kind of stuff you spambots are searching for.
Still, undaunted, here's the thing:
Social engineering by the current government and the last lot is at the root of this nonsense. I am not an Icke-like paranoid loon (in my humble opinion) but money rules, OK. The economies of the world are dominated by a smallish group of individuals and conglomerates that control a huge proportion of the wealth and power. Governments have to bow to their will.
You might think I'm talking shite but why else would we force our kids out of the home at such a young age, resulting in damage to their early development? We need their parents to work, that why! THEY have also conspired to force up up house prices for the same reason and it makes them extra money into the bargain. A side benefit of creating generation after generation of poorly educated Daily Mail/Express/Sun reading drones is that they are easily conned into believing an early education is good for the kids. Clearly it is not.
Is anybody out there thinking?
Bashing the Bishop
Posted Friday February 8, 2008
The media has been full of of the high-priest of the loony Christian left's absurd outburst on the subject of Sharia Law.
Why, Rowan, why? Then it dawned on me. He is watching the USA presidential primaries and seeing the massive influence the protestant church has on politics there. There is a very good chance (God help us all) that the Christian Right's candidate will be the next President of the USA.
Rowan must be hankering after the good old days shortly after the reformation when his predecessors word was all but law; when the pilgrim fathers scooted across the pond to set up the perfect protestant nation; and when all other religions were dealt with using as much violence as they pleased. Them were the days, eh!
He is crudely using reverse psychology to wake us all up to the insanity that people, thinking as he describes, will bring about if we don't all scamper quickly to the bosom of the mother church, surely! He cannot be serious, can he?
Here, we are witnessing why the American constitution forbids the intrusion of the inevitable extremism into its legislature and why voting for the Republican in November would be a disaster for the world. We are also witnessing the frantic death throws of a outmoded, outdated cult of fear, which of course is precisely what he is suggesting we inject into our legal framework.
Getting Environmentalism right, at last!
Posted Friday January 25, 2008
For once the BBC have some some good news to report on the environment. I do have sympathy for the islanders who wanted this project to boost their flagging economy. They also hoped it would keep more young people on the island but they were mis-guided.
Lewis needs investment and it desperately needs people and the Scottish parliament and the Highland Council should act to bring those things about. Selling their souls to 'environmental' mammon was not the answer and thank everybody's God they have been saved.
The damage this monstrous development (see details here) would have done to the Lewisian landscape and habitat over 100's of square miles was irreversible. Other industries can be found that will allow economic expansion and that will still preserve the irreplaceable. This is not conservatism gone mad, on my part; the consequences of this project going ahead would have been crime piled upon crime and our descendants would never have forgiven us (at the risk of sounding a little melodramatic).
update 12th February:
I ain't over 'till the big wumman screeches, it seems. My joy was premature (sadly something I'm used to). The latest whispers from the beeb suggest there is still plenty opportunity for madness, corruption or self-delusion to destroy the Lewisian landscape for ever. It seems the Scottish Parliament is begging people to give them reason not to turn the plans down.
Who let the dog out, woof, woof?
Posted Friday January 25, 2008
I have found myself watching, for several weeks now, several episodes of the marvelous 'Dog Whisperer' on Sky3 (via Digital Terrestrial - 'Freeview').
This is superb television staring the brilliant Cesar Milan. He is a genius. He is the pack leader and fully understands the psychology of the dog pack and how that works in human company. Even more importantly, he knows how human psychology works in the company of dogs.
Most episodes, his help is focused more on the human issues than the dogs'. The dogs are much simpler creatures than we all imagine and are put in their proper place in the pack very quickly by Cesar. The humans take a little longer.
I see a link between Cesar's work and our social ills generally. It looks increasingly obvious to me that humans are far simpler creatures than we delude ourselves to be. We too are pack animals in need of leadership, some of born to the job, others not. We are all taught by our 'betters' that we are free to achieve whatever we are willing to work for etc. etc. Most of us seem to aspire to more, with our unleashed free-will and live at odds constantly with our fellow humans.
Perhaps as a society we just need a sharp tug on the leash or jab in the shoulder every time our minds start to wander into cloud-cuckoo-land, or every time I start to rant! I would be so much happier in 'calm-submissive' mode following the pack leader.
p.s. If a search brought your here rather than S&M.com (or the like), apologies.
Thieves desparate to go straight myth.
Posted Wednesday January 23, 2008
Another article at The Register on software piracy, reminded me of a rant I've only ever briefly covered on this site. I am no economist but just how can this be true?
It is obvious to me that software, film and music thieves are providing a service to people who, in the main, would not be able to afford it. Call me flippant if you like but how do people who can't/won't buy at industry set prices miraculously find the dosh if piracy was impossible?
No, good citizens, this is management speak aimed unfairly and squarely at dumb shareholders. The reason my overpriced products gravy-train is not stuffing your pillows with dividends this quarter is those pesky pirates again. It has nothing to do with short term accounting policies that make more affordable pricing impossible and longer term mega-profits more likely - in an accountant's wet dreams.
The same is true for all other services and products out there. The companies that will still be household names in the future are the long-termists that drop their profit margins and consequently sell more. They are usually privately owned!
Comment [1]
Pish-Posh, Tish-Tosh bollocks hocus-pocus
Posted Wednesday January 23, 2008
This, from the BBC, is scaremongering bullshit. This, from the BBC, has clearly been forgotten. This, from level-headedness-ville, is entirely relevant and sobering.
The horse is dead people, stop flogging it!
update 25th January 2008:
Now the American Geophysical Union have declared from on high that man-made-global-warming is clearly causing climate imbalance, having just realised, after four years, what a gravy-train their members are missing out on, one presumes. The BBC are reveling in the announcement today.
addendum:
Climate Resistance don't take the AGU's political gob-shite lying down. They wisely summarise here a heated debate, on the New York Times "Dot Earth" blog, about the announcement.
Charlie Wilson's War
Posted Tuesday January 22, 2008
Now that's a good movie! Last night was Monday so the theatre was hardly packed; perhaps 30 people but they were all at least late twenty something and well behaved.
The Oscar goes, without doubt, to Phillip Seymour Hoffman for his utterly absorbing performance as Gust Avrakotos the principal CIA agent in the plot. Tom Hank excels in a convincing performance as the flamboyant Congressman Charlie Wilson and Julia Roberts is believably camp as the outrageous Texan millionaire Joanne Herring.
This is superb cinema for grown-ups. It makes excellent use of archive news footage and a small amount of terrifyingly believable CGI. We see Soviet helicopter gunship attacks on Afghan villages and towns from the pilots' perspective, a la PS3.
Mike Nichols directs a fabulously believable montage of American political life, covert operations and cold war politics set utterly convincingly in the eighties.
The story, based on George Crile's book, is all the more intriguing because the real Charlie Wilson and Joanne Herring are still alive. These two and Gust Avrakotos (who died in 2005) are, as portrayed, utterly likable people of enormous passion, humour and intellect.
We are asked to believe two potentially provocative theses on the conduct of the cold war, which make this movie borderline propaganda in the context of the 'war-on-terror'. Firstly that America is the Muslim world's friend because they financed the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan; and secondly that Israel helped.
The film ends with white text on a blackened screen confessing that although America made the right decision in Afghanistan in the cold war context, they clearly 'fucked' it up afterwards. The final scenes emphasize Charlie Wilson's alleged frustration at this.
This is not a bad interpretation of recent history and I do buy it but like the film makers imply, we are now paying for the mistakes made afterwards. A huge door has been left open for the sequel - 'Osama the early years'.
When is a limit not a limit?
Posted Monday January 21, 2008
I am no angel or model citizen (or subject - ma'am) so I may occasionally, when distracted or otherwise, stray above the odd speed limit momentarily when I am occasionally let out. Hence I am not a good driver. I have commented before on this site about this issue but feel the need to clarify one or two things.
Question 1 - what does 'limit' mean in a speeds-on-roads context?
Answer to Question 1 - a maximum that has been determined to be safe according to type of vehicle, type of road and location, and which sometimes varies according to prevailing conditions, and in which no way should be considered a target speed.
Question 2 - what does 'maximum' mean in a speed-limit-on-roads context?
Answer to Question 2 - a speed not to be exceeded in ideal driving conditions; the following not being ideal -
- poor light or darkness
- wet road and/or rainfall, snowfall, hail etc
- fog or mist
- ice
- bright sunlight (especially reflecting on a damp or wet road)
- very busy road
- junctions and turnings of any type
Question 3 - given the above when is it safe to drive at the speed limit?
Answer to Question 3 - very rarely!
Question 4 - what do you gain by driving faster than the speed limit or at an unsafe speed under the speed limit?
Answer to Question 4 - in town nothing is gained because there the journey time is determined entirely by the number of roundabouts, junctions, traffic lights, traffic volumes etc. Out of town time may be gained but only an significant amount over very long distances.
Question 5 - what do you lose by exceeding the speed limit or safe speed under the limit?
Answer to Question 5 - your licence, your dignity, your life, the life of another, damage to your property or the property of others, your job, your freedom, your home, your marriage, your mental health, limbs etc
I suggest we all just learn to chill and try to enjoy our journeys a bit more.
In the meantime, it seems most of you don't give a shit anyway, so what's the point of me? I should just point out though, that as a former motorcyclist, these figures look extremely dubious to me. I would wager that the vast majority of untaxed bikes are actually scooters driven by 'yoofs' acting as drug mules. Also, even the proportion who are genuine tax dodgers will only amount to a tiny fraction of the untaxed vehicles on the road. Most, by a very long way, are cars. This could be another attempt by the itchy classes to rid our roads of the environmentally negligible and traffic jam busting motorcycle.
I am nobody but I do know how to fix the world.
Posted Friday January 18, 2008
I have decide to single-handedly fix the world's problems by inventing a post-Utopian society structured on the principle of power sharing. You can read about it here as it develops.Qualifications are Dangerous
Posted Thursday January 17, 2008
I was recently at a 'drinks party' given by a good friend who works for the Environment Agency where most of the guests were from that or related industries plus a journalist.
They also had all met while doing courses at various levels from ONC to HND (Secondary to 2/3 Tertiary) in environmental management disciplines. They are without exception, apparently, convinced by the IPCC/Kyoto bullshit, not surprisingly.
I stuck my oar in at one point questioning the IPCC's motivations and legitimacy, silencing the group, awkwardly. A few drinks later the room buzzed again, shame!
'Climate Resistance' have done some interesting and revealing research (and here) into the qualifications of the IPCC's high priests.
Pimping the pulpit
Posted Wednesday January 2, 2008
Call me a right-wing reactionary Holocaust Denier if you like but man-made-global-warming is a myth and it is increasingly likely that global-warming as a whole is nothing more than boogey-man hokum.
So, I find it particularly irritating that Christianinity has so comprehensively given up on soul saving that it has to resort to saving the planet instead. Why? God is going to give it a right royal seeing to at the 'end of days' anyhoo; isn't S/He?
At every opportunity they imply in their preachings that we will burn in hell if we don't stop destroying the planet. Even the Archbishop of Canterbury is at it. Read how Jeremy Clarkson sees him off in the Times.
Happy New Year, by the way!
West Lothian Answer
Posted Wednesday November 7, 2007
They keep asking the question without properly considering the answer. So here it is: It is political mischief designed to divert attention from real issues and to stir up an inbred English chauvinism that politicians regularly fall back on when they are desperate.
I don’t need to explain why they are desperate (the economy is screwed - debt bubble is about to burst) and it must be somebody else’s fault. They have tried the sick, unemployed, youth, bad parenting, immigrants and terrorists and failed so it must be Scotland’s fault!
I don’t have to repeat here the contribution Scotland made to the development of Britain and its wealth or the Scottish blood spilt in its defence and the protestant population of Ulster, surely.
Instead, I will talk about contracts, agreements, treaties and law. Following the accession of Scotland’s James VI to the English throne in 1603, we had nearly 100 years of relative peace between our nations. We also had a great deal of Scottish nobles investing in England and vice versa. It was a win win century and so it was not difficult to persuade the Scottish people to agree to a full Union in 1707. Note: Scottish peoples’ decision!
The Act of Union was an agreement that enshrined in British law that decsion A few requirements of the Scottish people were included in that perpetually binding contract. We were to keep an independent church, legal and financial systems and we were to have a deliberately excessive number of MPs at Westminster to protect our interests.
We still require that protection until we gain true power over our affairs, ideally with full independence. Any other move to reverse any part of the Act of Union will be a breach of contract, illegal and an act of war, as far as I am concerned. The Scottish people should not treat this as something minor or as a laughing matter.
There needs to be a separate debate on whether we should retain the monarchy in the event of independence. We should also consider whether the SNP’s love of the European Union would put us in a better position than the Swiss, the Channel Islands, Isle of Man, Monaco etc. And, without question, THE OIL IS OURS!
An independent, neutral, non-aligned Scotland could only grow. As a powerless English puppet and dumping ground for failed technologies (wind farming) and WDM’s (the whole UK nuclear ‘deterrent’ is based here), Scotland can only continue to shrink.
The English gutter press and Scottish Tory press continue to stir up their mindless, gullible zombie readers with stupid and groundless spending comparisons. It costs more to run Scotland, when taken irrelevantly as a whole, because so much of it is rural and sparsely populated and when it has suffered so much neglect in the past. The same is true of Wales and Northern Ireland or large rural regions of England. The proportion of tax wealth redistributed to areas that are expensive to run is bound to be higher than densely populated English cities and other areas where economies of scale massively reduce costs.
No right thinking individual would ever think it wrong to pay more to build a road in a mountainous area than it does to build or maintain one in a town, for example. Scotland has more public swimming pools because if it didn’t people would have to travel 100s of miles to use one; similarly with hospitals and other public services. The same should be true in England but the blue-rinsed masses of middle England are so obsessed with the value of their houses and their savings that they would rather sacrifice good quality than pay more tax, and then blame Scotland (or anybody else) for their problems.
They do it all the time. They sack their football managers because it can’t possibly be the case that there are not 11 good enough players with the right parentage to win another world cup. The answer to the West Lothian question my southern cousins is this:
It’s all your fault, all your problems, and you will consider interfering further with Scotland’s affairs at your peril!
England is the question. Scotland is the answer!
siding with the enemy
Posted Wednesday October 24, 2007
Read this definition of hate speech here and let me know what you think.
I think he is right! Free speech is not something enshrined in UK law as in the US but what we do have is being constantly eroded by the politics of fear.
There are many links on this site that will take you to predominantly right-wing (dark side) points of view. There are plenty others that take you to the light side and that has nearly always been where I would naturally position myself, most comfortably. In the seventies I did vote for the right but never since.
So what has that got to do with anything? Change is life and I am struggling with it. I no longer have the patience to solve problems the ‘liberal way’. I’m running out of time. The right offer quick fixes that make more sense in the short-term and we are all here for the short-term, after all. The fearmongers require us to think ahead, to see the bigger picture and to work for the greater good. I am learning daily that this is folly. The future will take care of its own. We are all the future product of somebody else’s past and we managed, and look what they left us with.
Don’t get me wrong. There is no man-made global warming or no real global warming to worry about. I am not talking about that kind of problem. I would be the first to support a project to protect the planet from an asteroid collision and want to do my best to protect as much ecology and habitat as possible. But preserve every building and landscape feature from the past and preserve/conserve as much of the ‘countryside’ as possible - no; that too is folly! There is plenty room for us all to spread out a bit.
None of that is really getting to the point. I have discovered, in my near dotage, that I am more and more aligning with right wing thinking (centre right). They have more solutions that would see beneficial change in my life time. Luckily they are still allowed to express their thoughts reasonably openly but for how much longer?
Praise be John Brignell, the eloquent voice of reason
Posted Monday October 22, 2007
JB on Carbon - one of life’s little necessities.
There is no question that he is right, not least about the religious nature of the campaign. Why don’t we care anymore? The average Briton seems to have entered a mental state whereby s/he no longer gives a single toss whether or not they are being told the truth. What matters is that they feel undisturbed and cosy in their steady, cotton wool wrapped, unrocked boat.
They choose friends who look the same as them; who sound the same as them; who vote the same as them; who listen to the same music, watch the same TV, read the same ‘newspapers’, go to the same pub; who go to the same church, sports events or whose children go to the same school.
They believe that their political representatives and their media lackeys more or less tell them the truth and have their best interests at heart. They believe that the police and security services are concerned mostly with protecting them and their children. They believe in Global Warming.
You are a bunch of dumb asses!
…but here is someone else with true courage (a post-modern lionheart) - Dave Bellamy writing in the Times.
A culture wiped clean and washed out - hand me a can of paint and a bucket!
Posted Thursday August 16, 2007
We are living ‘at the end of times’ surely, it must be. How can it be anything else? We have all become like the worst kind of spoilt little children, always demanding stimulation and entertainment. I gaze in amazement at anybody I come across who finds life stimulating enough without the need for the artificial or alcohol induced. The exceptions prove the rule.
If you are not being entertained, with the intelligence knob at low, in a cinema or online or at a theme park; or you are not prostrate on a, damp British or sweltering foreign, beach or watching TV or reading the latest best-seller; what are you doing? Complaining that you are bored, I’ll wager!
When all generations start sounding and acting like children we must be devolving, surely. We are all frightened by everything, just like children. We are all scared of change, risk and any kind of stranger or unusual events, just like children. We are easily manipulated by the perceived grown-ups (politicians, newspapers, TV news readers, Police and anybody ‘in authority’), just like children. We all demand instant attention, gratification and satisfaction, regardless of cost, just like children.
We don’t bother to vote, we don’t complain (officially) but whine and whimper and have tantrums. We loose interest in anything older than a few months and can’t focus on beyond a couple sentences in emails, texts or letters. We believe we need to change how we dress according to the diktats of fashion mongers.
What a sad bunch of fuckers we turned out to be. What a country we have out there, and it is empty. Nobody exploring it; nobody stopping and looking for long enough to appreciate it; nobody enjoying the beauty of it. Our recent obsession with immigration is obviously driven by a desire to discourage breeding outside the gene-pool so as to maintain our comfortable numbness (to quote Pink Floyd).
RIP Royal Society - past greats turn in grave shock
Posted Monday August 13, 2007
I agree wholeheartedly with the ever vigilant Prof Brignal (see ‘A Right Royal Panic‘ on his Number Watch, August 2007 page).
What the fuck is going one?
Here we have the premier UK science body publishing a staggering insult to the process of science, in desparate defence of its establishment position (in the interests of fairness and balance have a look at their simplistic ‘Misleading Arguments‘ PDF). Titling every page ‘Misleading Argument…’ and aswering with ‘What does the science say’ is just about the least scientific, Daily Mail headline guff I’ve ever read. Science never says the other theory is wrong because it is not scientific to do so. There cannot be a definitive right or wrong in systems as complex as this (though you will find many more scientists through the links on this site more convinced by the counter arguments and evidence). Of course they use the form ‘the science’ because they are referring to the specific government sponsored, environmental politics motivated cynical science being conducted by the gravy train riders.
They know that many readers of this extremly misleading document will not make the distinction. They have not said ‘What Science says’ because they know that a great deal of science says there is no (or little) man-mad global warming and that the science behind the arguments the RS are attempting to refute here is more robust and easier to defend than the particular science being hyped here.
The great founders and past members of this once great institution will be turning in their graves. Science is dead, long live the religion of ‘New Science’, no empirical evidence required!
Who are the puppet masters?
Posted Friday August 10, 2007
The climate warming myth mongers are getting truly desperate. I posted a rant about the BBC’s reporting of a shoddy looking claim debunking the superb work of Svensmark on solar interaction with cosmic rays and their affect on global temperature. I was angered by the fact that the BBC had concluded that this new paper by Lockwood et al had finally settled the matter and thus we are doomed.
Now you can read a full response to this astonishing claim, which exposes the slipping standards in the Royal Society’s review process and, yet again, emphasises the importance of the Svensmark discovery.
I no longer have the slightest doubt that the green, scientific and political alliance of GAWD (Global Anthropogenic Warming Doom-mongers) are cynically manipulating the media for their own ends. I suspect the scientists are desperate to maintain funding to keep their research groups and University departments afloat. The politicians are keen to introduce new taxes and the green movement want to increase their political influence thus pushing forward the whole of their human progress hating agenda.
We, the easily manipulated, citizens of the world will be their victims as the full economic cost of saving the planet stifles development and destroys habitat as we try to generate power from ‘alternative’ energy, and as we try to feed the world without ‘polluting’ it with chemicals.
That the Royal Society should rush out such a poorly reviewed paper, so easily torn to shreds and that the BBC should so dramatically promote its absurd conclusions (and not report the response), is evidence enough that mainstream media and the public face of science is being used and is happy to be used to promote a ‘Green’ sponsored agenda.
So who is pulling the strings, and why? Is is politicians trying to raise tax revenues? Is it macro-economic manipulation to maintain a power balance status quo? Is it part of the war of fear being waged on the citizens of the world to keep us divided? Is it a religious plot to drive us whimpering back to the pews on a Sunday?
Post your suggestions here, please!
update (feb 08):
Read this this article about financial motivation all the way through (the juicy stuff about Greenpeace is near the bottom) and start joining up the dots.
the high church of fear
Posted Thursday August 9, 2007
As far as archaeologists can tell, and within the limitations of the historical record, we can be pretty sure that for as long as we have had self-awareness we have been scared of death.
Our entire history, as a species, lurches from one belief system to another or from one variation on the theme to another. All organised belief systems have sought to explain why and how we have come about, how we should live and what happens when we die. They are all systems of control, which appear to be more powerful than the sword, torture or starvation. We have across the globe resisted many forms of control and repression except the religious, until recently that is.
As communications have advanced and we have become better informed, secularly, and generally better educated, we have increasingly abandoned or doubted the teachings and dictats of the ’spiritually’ minded.
This does leave a gap because we still have a natural inclination to fear death. If we don’t believe the hocus-pocus and boogey man, child scaring that constitutes most religions, where does that leave this fear?
It leaves it, good reader, wide open to exploitation by the forces of marketing and politics. If we don’t do X, Y or Z we are bad and we will die. If we are not good and obedient subjects we will suffer and probably die. If we do A, B or C we are bad and we will die.
So, now you know why we have uncontrollable global warming, global terrorism, threats of plagues, identity theft, economic collapse and runaway imigration. They are pushing our rawest, most exposed buttons to make us angry, reactionary and conformist. We are under their control and only they can save us! Free your minds fellow ingrates! Death is for the future and life is for living.
I hope I am wrong but…
Posted Tuesday August 7, 2007
Something stinks.
I am clearly going mad. The only alternative is that there really is a conspiracy on a global scale and we are all its victims.
Why does our government want us to be scared all the time and why do they engineer events and circumstances to ensure we are?
Have a look at this for example: Prof. Brignell has published a chapter from his excellent ‘Epidemiologists’ on his number watch website. It is a brilliantly researched and thorough essay, exposing the lunacy behind a typical New Labour crisis; in this case Foot and Mouth Disease.
We also have terrorism, the global warming myth, food and health scares on a daily basis, a new cold-war, immigration etc. I have concluded that they must be trying to distract our attention from something far worse than any of these. I just don’t know what.
I prefer alien (the extra terrestrial kind) invasion. We have had a lot of unnecessary reports in recent months telling us UFO sightings are all hoaxes, natural phenomena or otherwise scientifically explainable and identifiable. They have told us that many times before so why remind us now? There is something going, there is you know, mark my words. If you never read this because THEY silence me, you will know I was right. RUN fer fecks sake!
It is also possible that the planet is cooling down rapidly. There are plenty indicators that this is more likely than warming. Maybe, just maybe, the ice-age returneth sooner than expecteth! RUN fer fecks sake, south!
James May’s 20th Century
Posted Wednesday July 25, 2007
Last night I watched James May’s 20th Century on BBC2. Presumably scripted by the Open University’s History/Sociology Departments, he tried to argue that the Teenager as a phenomenon emerged as a result of changes in technology.
Don’t get me wrong, I like James May but this was hogwash. Yes, we have had a massive change in fashion off the back of man-made fibres; and culture changes brought about by portable transistor radios, with programming directed at teenagers; and the cheap moped made them more mobile etc.
But these products successfully marketed to teenagers are a result of the pre-existence of that market. The market existed because of sociological changes pre and post second world war. Compulsory education to a much later age and increased affluence have combined to created a sociological group that did not exist beforehand. The 12 to 16 yearolds who no longer had to work on the farm, the mill or the factory or for the family trade, but did have to go to school, now had time on their hands. Their parents had enough money to keep them without forcing them to work so they could also afford the new inventions their teenage situation allowed, not the other way around.
The programme briefly referred to the games console/graffiti artist/skateboarding generation of today, still arguing that the associated inventions created the teenager. They did not make any comment at all on the nature of the teenager throughout the decades. They did not attempt to measure the wider cultural implications of the teenager separated from his/her family community and the associated crime.
The programme was undoubtedly entertaining and informative but it missed the point and avoided some harsh modern realities. It also made no comment on the economic after-effects of decades of training young minds to desire gadgets and to seek extra-community entertainment to the total exclusion of family/community sources.
Now that the first teenagers are great-grandparents I think we can see the consequences. The family and the community was killed off by the marketing industry’s zombification of the teenager and his parents and grandparents. Politicians have jumped on the zombie bandwagon, taking full advantage of the easy manipulation of the youth and their parents. They protect the economic forces behind this massive change in order to preserve their easily maintained power base.
I see a very different 20th century from that portrayed last night by the OU and James May.
Addendum.
So what about the teenagers. Of course they cannot wait to follow the example of their peers and their rebellion and endearing youthful self-confidence ensures they can’t help themselves. But, for millenia they developed into fully functioning adults while still remaining under adult guidance throughout those crucial years.
What we as a society are witnessing in the extremes of teenage behaviour is a desperate cry for help, guidance and supervision in a secure environment. We are denying them that by pandering to the idea that they can choose or make up their own minds, or that we should let them find their own way. We have created an insecure nightmare, which they make more insecure in their inexperienced desperation to find answers.
defending the insurers - wtf!
Posted Tuesday July 24, 2007
Yes. I do feel that that the global legalised pyramid selling scam they call insurance needs to be defended but just this once.
I have heard many people whimpering about their inability to obtain insurance against flood risk following our recent deluge. What they appear to be unhappy about is a commercial organisation, which has to make a profit to stay in business, refusing to throw money at them. What an insensitive, callous, son-of-a-bee-atch I here you yelling!
Here I am (hypothetically) living in a flood-plane or by a river in a house with no intrinsic flood protection and I expect an insurer, for a few hundred quid, to agree to pay out several thousand every time my house is wrecked by water. Despite the fact, as recent events clearly demonstrate, there is a massive probability that it will happen again. This is not joined up thinking. If all insurance was provided on that basis the industry would very quickly be exposed as the legalised pyramid selling scam it so very nearly is.
Imagine if they had to insure your car even if you had no driving licence and despite your car being unroadworthy. There would be carnage on the roads and premiums would cost more than cars. The only way your flood blighted homes could be insured would be if the rest of us had to endure massive premium increases. Alternatively we could endure massive tax increases to pay for a government administered compensation scheme. I don’t necessarily object to the latter but would prefer that the money was used for one off flood defense construction rather than continued hand-outs.
A better alternative is that people living in homes defined as being at risk should be compelled to pay a ‘premium’ into a central compensation fund that benefits different areas on different occasions. Call me what you like but, especially with new builds, its your bed so you lie in it - once it has dried off of course!
post-diluvian witch hunt
Posted Monday July 23, 2007
The media focus following our current spate of dampness will inevitably focus on the speed, quality and effectiveness of responses to the current crisis. This focus will most likely miss the point.
There will also be an inevitable dismissive resignation of clear thinking to the gospel according to the High Church of GAWD (Global Anthropogenic Warming Doom mongers). Our extreme weather is ‘obviously’ yet more evidence of global warming (they don’t even bother to say ‘man-made’ these days).
So what is my point? The first is easy. It is not caused by global warming. Just look at the TV helicopter pictures of medieval churches standing on islands of dry surrounded by floating houses built in later centuries. They knew a thing or two back then you know. I doubt if they had had divinely inspired visions of our decline and attendant retribution. I suspect they knew that the area inevitably gets frequently submerged. They would certainly lament the intellectual decline obvious in our modern choice of building plot.
My second point is the real cause of problems in areas not in obvious flood planes and river valleys. There has been severe flooding in other areas too, not to mention road and rail chaos. Why? Money, that’s why and poor climate/risk assessment modelling. Money is an issue because of modern accounting/management methodologies that inevitably lead to homes and businesses becoming flooded . The beancounters departmentalise everything, dividing up budgets down the hierarchical tree to ever more desperate managers and supervisors. Eventually you get to the manager whose job it is to decide how often to unblock drains or the manager who decides whether to erect or extend flood defences. You can see what happens next, no? My observation is that in areas where council tax is too low or where the hierarchy is top heavy, flooding and its after affects are worse than they should be. QED
A Religious Tale of Two Cities
Posted Friday July 20, 2007
Your hopeless host is torn, as you may have guessed from reading most of this site, especially spiritually (see - what I believe at the moment).
In recent years I have re-visited my youthful searching years and come to different conclusions about the meaning of life (see link above). So why am I bothering to tell the world? I am currently concerned about the state of ‘church’ in the protestant Christian western sense, amongst many other spiritual concerns.
Why ‘church’? I have close links with two very different ways of ‘doing church’ (as one of them likes to put it). One is a big-city, modern, self styled ‘we are all disciples’ evangelical, non-aligned, young church. The other is Methodist, utterly rooted in its very old tradition and in its much smaller rural city community, but with a young(ish) ministerial team. I will not name and shame here because I think my point is a general one about the mess protestantism is in and why it is failing.
What concerns me? Competition, marketing, limited resources, jobs for the boys, exclusivity, extremism, double standards, trendyism etc. etc., that’s what!
What do I mean by that?
The young trendy big-city church was ‘planted’, a decade or so ago, into an area with a lot of young disaffected Christians with new families or plans for new families. They are a wealthy church with an effective tithing system, which pays good salaries to the staff and maintains a good level of missionary work locally and overseas. The members can afford it! They have no permanent home but are now considering searching for one and raising the funds to afford it. I think, if they go ahead, they will succeed. They are driven by the passion of the charismatic founding pastor, who has on occasion moved me out of my box.
But.
They are obsessed with the trendy and fashionable in terms of communication, worship and lifestyles. Not surprising, given their demographic, but how does this spread the word amongst the less affluent, the elderly and the less trendy? I have been visiting this church every few months for nearly three years and a related one for a few years before that. The demographic does not change! There are no more than a handful of people with whitening or grey hair and surprisingly few non-white people given the area. They appear to be practising a form of Christianity in a particular style that limits their potential growth. They scare all but a narrow constituency away. They are preaching to the converted and feeling very self-satisfied about it.
So, what about the competition. For nearly twelve years I have been visiting one of the oldest Methodist churches in the country in a small rural city, at least three times a year. Despite pretensions to the contrary in the trendy modern church, above, I feel far more welcomed by the Methodists. I certainly detect far more tolerance and a natural warmth that comes from a much more mixed community. The membership numbers are very similar but the annual income is a third of ‘modern’ church.
There is true sense of family in the older church where generations worship together and do so where so many have done it before. The speakers here, ordained or lay, have also manged to move me out of my box (some more than others). The experience shows, the wisdom of the ages and old style of worship clearly puts off a proportion of younger members of the community but this is Methodism. They are, however, working on it unlike the church above, which appears quite content in its narrow mind-set and cult like worship of Jesus with no mention of God.
The old church have their own building and it makes such a difference. Extraordinary work is done here too in the local community and far beyond and there is much hidden generosity that does not show up in the official accounts. The young church is cult-like in its openness about giving and percentage tithing and strict conformity and suspicion of outside influences.
We have the old struggling to attract the new and the new failing to attract the old and not enough of both. The catholic church is still stuck in the middle ages. None of it draws me into a culture of regular church attendance or membership, even if they would have me with my beliefs. I see more long term hope in the Methodist church. There is a desire to change and an obvious wilingness to embrace or flirt with the new and I think its roots will see it through its culture clashes. The ‘modern’ church has more long term problems as its membership ages, and its attempt to emulate what it believes happened in the 1st century, actually expose it as the real old-fashioned church. Here the Methodists are in the accendancy, clearly listening to God now and not Jesus then.
muddle class muggles
Posted Friday July 13, 2007
It’s Friday and I feel like ranting but nothing much has grabbed my attention yet so I’ll get out of my pram on my fellow Brits.
What a bunch of saddos we are. Who are this messy mass of Blair voting, square-eyed school chasing, 4×4 desiring loooze-ers who call themselves ‘middle class’?
Middle is so bland.
Pre-industrial, pre-Victorian Britain was easy. You had the upper classes, who were wealthy, often titled and powerful. Then you had everybody else - the working classes. Then entrepreneurs arrived and became very wealthy (very very wealthy). The worried aristocrats coined the term ‘middle class’ so as not to confuse their often wealthier neighbours with the ruling elite. Of course, the new rich soon gained titles and establishment power themselves.
So, how did a phrase used to describe people richer than Bill Gates (pro-rata) come to be used to describe the assortment of ex-council house owning chavs, Daily Mail, Express and Harry Potter-is-good-literature reading, semi-illiterates who appear to have to work for a living?
Just about the only thing the British are particularly good at is tribalism in all its worst forms. We must categorise everybody or we don’t seem to know how to relate to them. It is vital that terms like ‘working class’ are only applied to manual labourers who don’t own their own homes; or people with ‘rough’ regional (anything not south-eastern RP, apparently) accents or people who drive old cars; or whose children get dirty or who are fat or people that watch soap-operas on TV or who have more than one maxed-out store card.
So almost everybody frantically scrambles to classify themselves as something else. They cannot claim to be upper class, so they go for middle class (even upper middle class) despite the fact that at least one (often both) parents in the family have to work to not go bankrupt, by the skin of their teeth, every month. They frequently both have to work to pay for all the things that, they would rush to boast, demonstrate their status.
Giving the idiots the vote was the mistake!
What got me to thinking about this was yet another misleading BBC news item ( - follow up , the original having been removed). I make it clear elsewhere on this site that I do not support the monarchy’s head of stateship but that does not mean I have any personal-level objection to the queen or her often unwise family. I also despise the monarchy/military/church/establishment power block, which clearly can usually manipulate the BBC (and far too much else besides).
All that aside, I did find it outrageously revealing and vindicating (I mistrust all mainstream media) that the Beeb has been so thoroughly exposed. What a disgusting manipulation of the facts. The relevance to this rant is why do we need a fly-on-the-wall, cheapo telly exposé of life in Buckingham Palace. I’ll tell you why, because the bloody stupid self-styled middle classes watch the shit and duly consider themselves informed.
They expose their crass stupidity when they watch without realizing that the Queen is, unlike them, NOT stupid. So they are not seeing anything like what normally goes on at the real top of the class tree.
Royal Mail strike
Posted Thursday July 12, 2007
Royal Mail staff will be on strike again from 7:00 p.m. this evening for 24 hours causing delay and mayhem again. Royal Mail management will be burying their heads in the sand and refusing to negotiate.
Whose side am I on. I don’t know!
I am not receiving a pay rise this year in anything like the order the CWU are demanding for their members and I don’t know anybody who is. I also don’t see any evidence that anybody will be forced out of their job. I do see and read regular evidence that our mail system is in chaos. I have absolutely no doubt that the attitudes of the unions and their members plays no small part in that.
On being forced to make changes because this is in fact the 21st century heels are dug in deeply and productivity is slashed. Management has been schooled in modern economics and management techniques so reacts stupidly. Stalemate ensues and the service quality plummets.
So I side with neither and ask that they just grow up and work for a living (both sides).
the establishment rallies, hurrah! Sound the charge, Tally Ho!
Posted Wednesday July 11, 2007
Take the startling revelations on the BBC today with a massive shovel of salt. You only have to notice that, unusually, the article has no links to the source of the research (thus avoiding too much scrutiny of its conclusions), and heavily biased editorial style. It is riddled with insulting platitudes when referencing alternative climate theories and is clearly motivated by a need to firmly anchor its own agenda in the mind set of the masses.
No, great citizens of the globe, do not be so easily swayed. Wait for clear thinkers with true scientific agendas and real climatologists to react and read what they have to say and then bombard the BBC with your protest. Here are links to keep an eye on while waiting for the dust of this malicious attempt to manipulate the truth to settle:
spiked, global warming hoax, sitewave, antigreen, number watch, icecap, friends of science news, previous post on this site
This is a desperate attempt by the British establishment to put their campaign firmly back on the rails after the recent revelation that Britons still have some common sense after all and just don’t believe the hype.
Edit: They must be reading my blog! They have now added the links but have not edited the sensationalist and ridiculous conclusion that the matter is now settled.
Edit (again): Story has now vanished off the Beeb front page, hedging their bets methinks. Some reaction beginning to appear on the web.
See above links. Specific link to an initial level-headed scientific response.
Nigel Calder (co-author of The chilling Stars… referred to below) responds to this report on the London Book Review.
dichloroacetate, magic-bullet cancer cure?
Posted Tuesday July 10, 2007
If there is just one person reading this I would urge you to linger a little longer and not jump to conclusions about this site, or its author, too quickly. I am a concerned citizen of this planet, particularly about the tight grip official mainstream media has on information.
For example:
I was reminded today about Professor Barry Marshall’s struggle to get the medical science establishment to accept his discovery that a simple and common bacterium was the main cause of most stomach ulcers and some cancers, and that they could be cured with antibiotics.
It took at least 15 years of ridicule and shameful insults, sponsered by drug companies with huge investments in more complicated medications, before patents ran out and doctors were ‘allowed’ to prescribe cheap and effective cures. Patients needlessly suffered for more than fifteen years for crying out loud! (see prof Marshall’s foundation website.
Now it might be happening again. The huge drugs industry is blocking, blanking and ignoring dichloroacetate (DCA) at a potentialy huge cost economicaly to health care providers and to cancer sufferers and their families and friends. You can find a good summary about how it works in this University of Southern Mississippi’s campus newspaper article, and information about the original research at the University of Alberta’s official DCA website.
Lobby your government representatives, physicians and national drug approval organisations to make them take notice of this research. It is likely to save billions of dollars/pounds and millions of lives.
See below, my rant about global warming for another example of how the science establishment can so effectively control the media at a huge cost to the rest of us for their own financial gain.
linux windows, the best of both worlds
Posted Tuesday July 10, 2007
Why don’t Microsoft take an opensource linux distribution and make it look, feel and function like Window XP or Vista. It would sell and it would work and the users and third parties could fix it quicker and better than MS, and MS would not have to pay them to do it! It’s a win win win solution.
Hardware manufacturers would suddenly find the wherewithal to write drivers for Linux Windows, which would surely work on other Linux distributions. Microsoft could do the same with OpenOffice to match the functionality in MS Office and sell it opensource or propriety.
The only downside from my point of view would be the likelihood that some existing Linux distributions might die a premature death but so would massive OS insecurity and unreliability.
an unholy stench
Posted Monday July 9, 2007
I want that incredible breed of uniquely selfish fascists, namely smokers, to understand something about this non-smoker’s position on the recent change in the law.
I find it mind-numbingly startling that the legislation allows the police to ignore complaints of continued pollution in enclosed spaces on the grounds that ‘it is an environmental issue for the council to deal with and not a police matter’.
What pile of wank infested dim-shittery allowed that to happen? If you are breaking the law, you are breaking the bloody law, no?
Why does it irk me so, you might ask? Well, I don’t care about the alleged health affect because the science looks dodgy to me. Too many variables in the lives of people to draw such certain conclusions, especially when you bare in mind the psychological make up of a typical smoker, which is the point I will eventually get to.
I have never met a smoker who isn’t cast-iron, premier division, card-carrying selfish from the bottom up, top down and inside out. How else can you explain a willingness to pollute an enclosed, space single-handedly or in groups, so completely with no regard whatsoever for anything or anybody else?
The rudely bald fact is that it STINKS, a particularly foul and rotten stench that impregnates everything it touches. No amount of dangly chemical pine trees can mask it; no amount of ‘Febreze’ can cloak it and no matter how far down wind you get, it is still minging from the very core of your lungs even when you are not smoking.
Smokers use this drug for its psychotropic affects. It changes them, calms them, changes their relationship to food (or physiologically interferes with their metabolism). It makes it easy for them to ‘pull sickies’, drive without regard for life and limb, jump queues, own cats that shit in their neighbours gardens, own dogs that don’t get their shit picked up, claim benefits that cannot possibly pay for their extremely expensive habit, raise the next generation of knife carrying school bullies etc. (you know who I mean).
The exchequer know that the percentage who smoke will never vary too much or they would never have sanctioned this new law. We need that £4 billion because only £1.5 billion is spent on treatment allegedly a direct result of smoking, so that leaves £2.5 billion for the pot and we do need it, especially for our nice shiny new nuclear submarines.
But, my point is, I don’t really care about the money or the health of self-harmers. I care about being made to stink by people with no self-control. Just as I would care about equally psychologically damaged people randomly selecting me for execution because the ‘voices told them to’, or hedonists keeping me awake all night.
It is a good law, which would not be necessary if humanity was as evolved as we like to think we are. I was recently in the north of Engerland (I live in the south for my sins) where I overheard a conversation in a cafe. A customer from Scotland was expressing dismay that the law was not yet in force. She was braver than me because I was merely expressing it quietly to my companion.
It amazed me then, just as it always has, that smokers have the temerity to light-up in such a small space and just a week before the law change. Why not practice or accept defeat gracefully and control yourself for thirty minutes for pity’s sake?
desperate cowards
Posted Monday July 2, 2007
There is a massive cultural gap between the Al Qaeda/Islamist/Middle Eastern ‘terrorist’ and us, here in the UK post 20th century wars/IRA.
The real terrorists are the state security machine and the media who revel in opportunities to tell us how scared we should be. The massive publicity they give to the cowards’ cause is mind-blowing. Have a read of this: from the Register. Why is this not being emphasized by the wall to wall newspaper coverage and TV news? You already know the answer!
And, the police, government and security agencies need us to believe that it was potentialy as bad or worse than before so that we will keep being good dogies. As explained in the linked article, it was not, and with incompetent and desperate cowards like these running the show, we have little to fear. Don’t forget that these are people who want to be sexually pampered for all eternity, for pity’s sake.
STOP GIVING THEM THE OXYGEN OF PUBLICITY by continuing to believe that we have a ‘right to know’ every detail about everything. The same goes for the BBC campaign to release Alan Jonnston. Stop mentioning him and the desparate cowards who have him will let him go. [edit: the let him go the day after I published this to the enormous relief of his family but I stand by the point]
The problem is that the media cause them to believe that we are scared of them. I am not! Bring it on Osama, you have already lost. That’s why we are the global ecomomic super powers and you are not and while you remain tied to the currency of medieval tribal score settling, that’s how it will remain. Islam clearly demonstrates all over the world that this need not be the case. Give up this barbaric ancient struggle and join the rest of us in the 21st century, now! That goes for Israel too! Oh, and American right wing Christian evangelists, while we are at it!
Please, please read this and stop panicking you gullible fools!!!
Posted Saturday June 30, 2007
originally posted May 2007
I am soooooo tired of listening to the ‘green’ lobby talking Such Hopeless Irritating Turd-inducing Empty-headed science fiction that I feel moved to raise this backwater blog from its ashes.
Please somebody read this and pass it onto just one friend and ask them to do the same before it is too late. Cheryl Crow can use as little bog paper as she likes. It will not make one tiny dump of a difference to this planet.
There is only one thing you need to know and you will find it between the covers of this book - The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change. At first glance you might be put off by the lousy cover design or the mention of ‘cosmic rays’ and other science fiction sounding elements.
But don’t be, this is very serious science which is being cynically hushed-up, ridiculed and side-lined by the self interests of other scientists and politicians. One of the most important side effects of this irresponsible response, to what is actually the result of more than twenty years of meticulous research, is that the full consequences of the authors efforts are not being researched in turn by those dismissive self-interested scientists.
In a nutshell, the authors have (as near as science ever can - and much much nearer than most science ever does) proved that man made carbon-dioxide does not have any bearing on global warming. I won’t go into why our farts, breath, cars and industry are irrelevant but concentrate on what is actually happening instead.
The sun (and the earth to a much lesser extent) have varying magnetic fields which protect us from all manner of space-borne menaces. Cosmic radiation of many sorts and energy levels is spewed out across the galaxy by exploding stars and always has been. These rays penetrate everything in their path but can sometimes be stopped slowed down or changed. The sun’s magnetic field diverts most of the harmful stuff away from the solar system with varying degrees of effectiveness over time and space as it travels through space, and as its own magnetic activity varies.
The earth’s contribution to this effort is much smaller but it too has a magnetic field protecting us from solar and cosmic radiation, again with varying effectiveness over time and space.
The earth and sun are constantly moving through space both in their orbits about each other and as the solar system orbits within its part of the galaxy and as the galaxy moves through intergalactic space. The upshot of this is that the energy, quality and quantity of cosmic radiation crossing our path varies over time.
As the sun’s magnetic field weakens more rays reach our atmosphere, which leads us on to the clever part:
Cosmic rays are the principal agents in the cloud seeding process where it matters at low levels. As they hit our atmosphere, highly energetic rays bombard molecules and cause effects that, the authors of the above book have demonstrated, lead to cloud formation. That cloud cools the earth by reflecting sun light and by radiating heat out into space. The more cloud the more cooling. So, the weaker the sun’s magnetic field, the more rays, the more low-level cloud and the more cooling.
For the past hundred years or so the sun has been very active, diverting more cosmic radiation and producing less cloud and thus warming the earth by exactly the same amount that ‘mainstream’ climatologists claim is caused by industrial activity over the same period.
The book also demonstrates very neatly why the inconsistencies in
‘mainstream’ climatology can also be explained by solar activity and why ‘mainstream’ climatology’s own data proves this ‘new’ theory.
The big question is WHY ARE THE GREEN LOBBY AND POLITICIANS IGNORING THIS? It is good science, very very good science. The answer is this:
Self-interest. Scientists pay their mortgages off the back of research grants directly or indirectly. Scientists are obsessed with their international prestige and status. Politicians live and die by the power of spin influenced opinion, and more and more use fear as their preferred weapon of mass distraction. They have also discovered (bless their sneaky little hearts) that they can raise taxes based on carbon output. Even more sinister is their obvious desire to slow down the development of newly emerging powers. The ‘Green Lobby’, despite their appearance, are also self-justifying politicians.
Another important read that clarifies a great deal about what is really going on, particularly politically at the UN IPCC and Kyoto level, is ‘Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years’ by Dennis T. Avery and S. Fred Singer.
Have a look too at John Brignal’s (University of Southamton) essay on the religious nature of the ‘green’ movement and his essay on bias and censorship, both on his Number Watch site, to understand why.
Tony Gilland of the Institute of Ideas has an excellent essay on Spiked, that you should not miss, focusing on the IPCC’s dubious role in this unnecessary debate.
Look at the scientific establishment’s reaction to Martin Durkin’s documentary for proof of the terror tactics being used by the climate warming police. The zealous priests of the High Church of Global Anthropogenic Warming Doom-mongers (GAWD) will sink to any level to protect their putrid doctrine.
Visit the Friends of Science website for a glimpse of what science was about before it became a religion and Freeman Dyson’s lesson on joined up thinking in the field of ‘climatology’.
Another dent in the plastic armour of the fear-mongers at CO2 Science.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), and other fairie stories
Posted Thursday June 14, 2007
I’ve been reading a lot of online advice on SEO and wondered what is really going on. I’ve concluded that it is laziness mixed with a dose of get-rich-quick-with-no-effortness. Let me explain.
In the ‘good old days’ when we had proper high streets with local shops for local people, we knew they existed and what they sold and we did not need to search for them. Sometimes we needed goods or services that were not available on our local high street. This is when things got complicated.
We might know somebody else who had purchased the same goods or services from somewhere-else-ville and we trusted them, so off we would trot (literally, in our carriage) and spend a couple nights in another county fetching the stuff. We would take cash from under the hay bale and Bob might be your uncle/father/brother.
If we did not know somebody else we might have seen a poster or a notice in the church or it is just possible that we heard about it on the wireless at last month’s bash at the village hall. We might all have stared at the horseless waggon with the bright sign on its side when it got lost and passed through the village last May (by the skin of its teeth).
So what’s my point? Advertising is how all traditional business gets noticed and why should that be different for online businesses? There are millions of web sites and maybe hundreds or thousands of people out there trying to compete with you. How on earth can you expect your page to get listed at the top of a search engine query for free???
My advice:
you get what you pay for, so stop wasting money on SEO and advertise in other media at what ever level is relevant to your business. If you can’t afford to do that, leave it to those who can and find another business. Don’t forget to include your URL in the advert!
Safari on Windoze!
Posted Tuesday June 12, 2007
Now that is news: safari now on windows. Hopefully, from a web developers point of view it will render sites exactly as it does on the Mac. This will allow windows developers to test sites without needing a Mac. Hopefully, this will not dawn on Apple who might be hoping to lure users away from the big-lazy.
If you are viewing this site on windoze IE pre version 7, you are just inviting horror into your world. Update to IE7 or use a real browser instead. Firefox, Mozilla and Opera come to mind and now Safari ,maybe (wait for it to be fully tested by the web community before you take the plunge).
Tip for new web developers: design and test sites on Firefox and/or Opera then put your hard work through the blender to make it work on IE. Don’t do it the other way round; the ‘real’ browsers follow the XHTML/CSS specifications far more closely than IE does and IE makes too much (dumbed down) effort to accommodate your mistakes.
edit: proxy server use crashes safari (waiting for beta2)
update January 2008
Have now installed Beta 4 and proxy server issue has been resolved and from what I have read I understand glaring security issues have been addressed too. I will put up a new post about its rendering reliability sometime before I die.
A nutcase’s manifesto for the UK
Posted Friday June 8, 2007
originally posted January 2005
Who are The Taxpayers Alliance?
I am trying hard to define them from a ‘Team America’perspective.(Don’t miss this cinematographic masterpiece but remember, they are really taking the piss out of us). Are the Taxpoopooers Appliance Pussies, Dicks or Assholes? Why don’t you tell me what you think. I thunk this a couple of days ago:
We should be paying MORE tax!
- Scrap charities because they cost too much to run and simply give, in the natural course of events, everything charities have to struggle (expensively) to raise. Stop defining all the needs they cater for as charity cases and treat them the same way we treat everything else that receives government money. All of them now, without exception!
- Fund the Health Service (this is a UK based blog) so well that private medicine is put out of business, including dentistry.
- Fund education so well that private schools are put out of business.
- Build all the roads we need and stop being precious about the countryside, and stop giving in to noisy NIMBYists!
- Re-build the entire rail network and re-nationalise it and all other public transport, which should then be heavily subsidised.
- Control property prices and rents, starting with a 80% reduction in all current values (maybe compensate those who had to buy at inflated prices but not those who have ‘profited’ by buying at reasonable prices in the past).
- For the next ten years only allow construction of properties to rent and make possession of empty property a crime, after a reasonable period of time. All empty properties defaulting to state ownership if unsold in that time.
- Control bank lending to prevent debt burdens and hold the banks properly accountable for the current levels of lending so that their profits take the brunt of any compensation paid to borrowers.
- Replace ALL regressive taxes with increases in national income tax, in addition to the extra tax needed to fund the above.
- Replace Council Tax with a local income tax collected centrally and redistributed to local authorities. The levels to be set by the locally elected authority with no central interference, initially at a percentage that would match current spending plus 50%.
- Take more stress relieving breaks and fewer stressful ‘holidays’. Replace our cars less often and don’t use them so often (make your precious brats walk or get the bus to school).
- Buy fewer gadgets, crap CDs, DVDs, magazines, and anything else we hardly ever use.
- Spend less money on ‘leisure’ and relax doing free things instead.
I think anybody reading this would class me as an Asshole so that leaves Dick or Pussy for the Taxpoopooers Appliance, you decide.
United Nations, please help
Posted Friday June 8, 2007
originally posted March 2005
Hello, I am a subject in the UK. I am not a citizen because a privileged elite, who inherited their stolen lands and power, rule over me.
Our Queen’s government is continuing to strip away our freedom. Soon we will have new ‘anti-terror’ laws that will allow politicians to lock people up without trial or the need to prove guilt. They will be able to use this law to lock up anybody.
They say it is to protect us from terrorists but it obviously will do no such thing. The same law was introduced in Northern Ireland in the 70s and only helped increase the violence. People who believe they are fighting a just cause will not be put off by this and every one locked up will be replaced, as was the case in Northern Ireland.
What is the threat anyway? Where are the bombers? and how would these measures have stopped them
In Iraq where the western military still rule and the threat is death, there is no reduction in violence. In Israel talk and promises of change are the only historically proven ways of reducing violence. No where on earth are there more draconian laws and so few civil liberties and yet so much continuing violence.
Adolf Hitler (another so called socialist) introduced laws similar to this and others introduced by our government and look where that led! We are being taken down a road well travelled filled with the warning signs of history and we, the voters, are being brainwashed by a well oiled propaganda machine to allow it to happen.
Fellow subjects, please stop reading the gutter press and the TV news. Search for the truth, debate it with decent people and think carefully about how you want to live in the future. Especially, think carefully about it as the coming general election approaches.
I don’t try to pretend that we live in a free country or that we ever did but the trappings of freedom that we are allowed are precious. If the representatives of the world community get a chance to read this before the UK closes its doors, please help.
yours faithfully, the insane voice of reason
Gone to the Dogs
Posted Friday June 8, 2007
originally posted May 2005
After much internal debate I dragged my weary, sick bones to the polling station last Thursday. I was actually ill, so I did have to make a bit of a physical effort but as the polling station is only 50 metres away, I can’t really complain. To be precise, it is 50 metres away as the crow flies, and about 80 metres by Shanks’ pony.
It didn’t exactly go smoothly though. I was first through the door and desperate to get back to bed but I didn’t have my ‘voting card’. I will probably never know whether ‘they’ never attempted to deliver it or if they mis-delivered it. I do worry that some low-life identity thief is trying to figure out how to use the information it contains to bleed me dry.
Anyhoo, back in the local school, the 150 quid a day polling official tried to tell me that as I didn’t have my card I couldn’t vote. ‘So’, I said ‘I am not allowed to exercise my democratic right because you failed to deliver my card?’ She checked and gave me a ballot paper. I asked what would happen if some low-life scus bucket turned up with my card, expecting her to show me the red button she would press, which would activate a squadron of helicopter borne special forces. Au contraire, it turns out that they would be allowed to vote on a pink ballot paper. ‘Bugger me’ I thought.
The question is, what happens to the pink ballot paper at the count, and does anybody investigate this crime?
What about all the other lazy dogs who didn’t vote? If you are not willing to get off your fat arses to vote (even if it for nobody on a spoilt paper) don’t you dare whine about anything you don’t like about this god-forsaken shit-hole excuse for a country.
I’ve done my bit so I reserve the right to whine without restriction. You can shut up. Now!
So what have my fellow ingrate Britons done to themselves this time? Put the same lying, National Socialist back in power. The lessons of history (30s Germany) have still not been learned. Remember, you read it here first. The selfish, greedy self-obsessed, tiny-minded, bigoted, ignorant ingrates have decided that personal possessions, house-prices, tax-levels etc are more important than world peace, starving millions and planetary disaster. I feel all warm and proud.
Click on the Make Poverty History link and do something to make up for it.
Road Charging
Posted Friday June 8, 2007
originally posted june 2005
I don’t disapprove of our glorious 5th Reich’s plans to introduce GPS based road charging over the next decade, providing they make a few things clear:
- How the information is stored and who has access to it.
- They link the system to a ’smart licence’ or ID card system so that the card has to inserted into the device before the vehicle will start. The database should include insurance status of all vehicles or drivers.
- The device should include an alcohol breath analyser that will prevent the car starting on detection. All such attempts should be recorded and the act of attempting this more than twice should be criminalised.
- They make it clear that such a system’s ability to record speeds WILL be used to fine all the murderous idiots on our roads.
- They make it clear that such a system’s ability to note parking infringements WILL be used to fine all the selfish morons in our towns and cities.
- They make it clear that such a system’s ability to record a number of other detectable traffic offences WILL be used to automatically issues fines.
- They include warning devices in the ca