Civil War by Stealth

Posted 4 December 2008

By embracing 'green' human progress hating politics; by covering up an energy crisis; by fighting wars we have no business being involved in; by introducing a series of 1930s Germany style fascist laws; by interfering in every aspect of our lives; by stealing our right to free health care (including psychiatric and dental); by selling the family silver and jewels; by creating a massive layer of unelected bureaucracy; by allowing unrestrained free-markets to prioritise short term gain; by pandering to the selfish whims of the stupid 'middle' classes; by being ineffective in every aspect of governance; by over-empowering the keepers of the peace; by abandoning industry in favour of service; by lying about educational expectations; by looking after their own best interests; by allowing mis-information and outright lies to dominate our corrupt media, this government and its post war predecessors have been declaring war on its citizens for decades.

We have been too stupid to notice that we, the people, are at war with our leaders and each other. It is a long drawn out, slow fight to the death of our once great nation.

And we are going to lose!

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Friday entertainment

Posted 22 February 2008

Nothing more than a link to a funny story (scroll down the page).

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Seachd - The Inaccessible Pinnacle

Posted 19 February 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.

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BOHF

Posted 15 February 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?

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Ratatouille

Posted 15 February 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.

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Conning the Daft Classes

Posted 8 February 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?

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Who let the dog out, woof, woof?

Posted 25 January 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.

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Charlie Wilson's War

Posted 22 January 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'.

Comment

When is a limit not a limit?

Posted 21 January 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 -

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.

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I am nobody but I do know how to fix the world.

Posted 18 January 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.

Comment

A culture wiped clean and washed out - hand me a can of paint and a bucket!

Posted 16 August 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).

Comment

James May’s 20th Century

Posted 25 July 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.

Comment

muddle class muggles

Posted 13 July 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.

Comment

A nutcase’s manifesto for the UK

Posted 8 June 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!

I think anybody reading this would class me as an Asshole so that leaves Dick or Pussy for the Taxpoopooers Appliance, you decide.

Comment

Kate Bush, Ariel - First Impression

Posted 8 June 2007

originally posted January 2006 

I read a good review of this album so feeling a little nostalgic I added it to my Christmas List. I don’t like Christmas lists; I’m an idealist. I would much rather only receive gifts from people who know me well enough to know what to get me without asking but that would be hypocritical. So, guess what I got for Christmas?

After listening to it last night I am doubly grateful.

Last night I set about copying it to my hard disk ready for listening. I do this secure in the knowledge that I am breaking no copyright laws and with gratitude to Kate Bush and her record company for not using copy protection. The original disks, beautifully presented in their fold open case, will remain unsullied for years in the CD rack looking good, give or take a little dust. The presentation is good. The pictures on the two discs are re-printed on the cover background and somebody has been paid to line them up perfectly. I doubt if a machine does that (does it)?

A little info about how I listen to my music: I rarely listen to CDs directly on an open stereo speaker system because I find it hard to avoid distractions. I use headphones via my computer and I don’t might the slight loss of spacial accuracy. I have in a past life been an enthusiastic audiophile with ‘golden ears’ but I can no longer afford that luxury. I now use the following system:

I have a Linux server PC with large data disks connected on a Gigabit Ethernet to a Windoze Workstation. The Workstation has a 3.0 GHz Prescott CPU on a fast motherboard with 2GB of PC3200 RAM. I use HyperOS 2005 to run multiple specialised XP Sp2 installations one of which is dedicated to listening to CDs, so has no unnecessary software loaded. HyperOS does require a re-boot when switching between systems but it is a couple of minutes well spent considering the benefits. It is easy to duplicate systems; to backup and restore; test software; minimise systems where the whole CPU load is needed for something demanding like software synthesisers or video making; keep Internet access restricted to one copy of windows; have dedicated systems for different users (not just dedicated logins) and so on. The point is: I can listen to music without glitches or any interference without having to use a dedicated PC for the purpose.

The CD listening installation consists of XP SP2 set up to recognise all installed hardware but with anything not being used disabled. My sound-card is a Creative Professional EMU 1820 connected to a set of Beyerdynamic DT 770 pro headphones. I use Alcohol 120% to make and use the CD image and listen using Media Player.

So why do I feel the need to tell the world about this? I enjoy a great deal of music across a very wide range of genre. I listen to some music I have liked for thirty years and much that I have discovered more recently. I have many albums I enjoy enough to play over and over again but this is first time in twenty years I have been moved so much by a piece of music. The last time was during my audiophile years. I worked as a sound engineer and felt the need to spent far too much of my pay on a wonderful Hi-Fi: Michel Gyrodec, Shure SME, Brier, Audiolab etc. I came across a recording on vinyl of Rachmaninov’s Vespers made in Russia in the early 60s. It was and is (I still have it) sublime. I have never been able to listen to an Italian, Spanish, Welsh or any other tenor less than critically since hearing the tenor parts performed to such perfection, with the unique colour the Russian accent brings. The whole recording is a beautiful work of art but it was the tenor that moved me so much twenty years ago.

This double CD by Kate Bush is a musical creation that must come close to perfection. The poetry of Kate Bush’s lyrics have reached a mastery that touches me at every level. This is after just one listening. At one point I found myself imagining that she had hypnotised me so that I was listening to my own idealised version of her album. I thought that maybe everybody who listens to it will hear their own personal version; that is art. The music is perfectly crafted around the words (and bird-song) and carries me powerfully from barely separated song to song. This is the concept album with short tracks finally mastered by a master. This is the Wall as it could have been if Roger Waters had only waited twenty years before he wrote it.

Kate Bush made me cry and I love her for it.

Comment

Woody Allen - Match Point and other matters

Posted 8 June 2007

originally posted January 2006 

Continuing the review theme; we dragged our weary bones to the local Vue yesterday to see the new Woody Allen - Match Point. I booked the tickets online on Friday and read the review in the new all-colour-Observer just a couple hours before going. Oops, they don’t like it.

I should say a little about the local Vue. I prefer this cinema’s stadium seating to the slightly raked traditional layout. It also has ample leg-room and comfy seats and a reasonable sound system; expensive parking though! This is my first big screen Woody Allen.

It stars Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Emily Mortimer, Matthew Goode and Scarlett Johansson, who all look good and perform more than well but there is something lacking in all the characters. There are three very distinctive apparent scripting styles scattered randomly throughout this fairly long film (124 mins). Woody Allen very obviously doing upper class English dialogue and not quite pulling it off; Woody Allen New York dialogue shoehorned straight into the London context, uncomfortably and several scenes, which appear to have been adlibbed as an afterthought. This is not a comedy but Allen does manage to expose some of the amusing absurdities of upper class life and wealth and some more basic universally recognisable relationship humour. There are laughs here and there as a consequence.

It is a small story in a grand setting about shallowness, deceit and betrayal, which ultimately exposes desperation in the weak-minded main character and tragedy. Allen does observe the silly life-styles from a distance without much directorial comment but as a result we didn’t really see much depth of character. I found it difficult to know what to expect from any one them but did find myself wondering afterwards if that wasn’t the point. There is drama, tension, glamour and a touch of mystery and lots of style but I will remain content if I never see it again.

The film leaves enough of an impression for me to be angry about the ending and whether that is a result of Allen’s decision to write it that way to rattle the audience or because that really is how life works out sometimes, I don’t know. It is possible that the main character’s claim that luck is more important in life than anything else is the point being made and that sometimes it is impossible to see when the luck is good or bad. We are given a dream/guilty conscience scene to lecture us that whatever the outcome there is a price to pay but the guilty party doesn’t seem to have to even make a down payment.

Dragging my still not fully recovered, after a month of viruses, weary bones to a half empty cinema did re-awaken my Sunday trading discomfort dilemma. Should we keep it special? Yes, of course but how, and what about keeping Fridays and Saturdays special too? I would prefer that the specialness be part of a cultural sea change where we all just slow down and stay put and travel less and use less and spend less and expect less. Instead of giving so much time and money to our global masters give more of both to ourselves, our neighbours and those who need it more than us.

Comment

Mr Grumpy lets off steam - opinionated sod!

Posted 1 June 2007

first published elsewhere at another time

Charity is only necessary because we don’t give a shit.
You can find opinions about charity elsewhere on this site but Mr Grumpy wants to add a few thoughts. I believe that all charity is an expensive waste and unnecessary way of raising funds to meet clear and obvious needs a truly civilised society would meet as a community automatically, through taxes or other nationally accumulated wealth reserves. Politicians use the charity system as a way of disguising the true cost of being civilised and caring while allowing some of us to feel good about ourselves. They know we are never going to vote for a political system that will donate more to all charity causes than we currently do by raising taxes for all of us by say 10%, even though this represents significantly less money than we currently voluntarily donate willingly to charities, and would therefore save most of us money in the long run (on average). It would also force those who currently refuse to help others to do so. Why on earth should anyone with a need served by the existing charity system have to beg for the basic essentials of life (and in some cases unbegrudged and well deserved luxuries), which surely is what society is about?

There are a lot of people giving up their time and whole lives to help others for free because the rest of us are not willing to pay for the essential work they do. It’s pathetic! We are a nation of whining, ignorant, lazy, selfish, greedy idiots, who seem to believe that social responsibility takes second place to holidays overseas; new cars when there is nothing wrong with the old one; houses full of gadgets and regular piss-ups. The sad thing is how little of this we would have to give up just to match current charity activity through taxes, without having to pay the volunteers! It is also amazing how quickly people change their tune when they find themselves relying on charity.

This is closely related to the subject of ’state hand-outs’ (a subject close to Mr Grumpy’s heart). If you read the right-wing reactionary press or watch most television news programmes, you will have been given the impression that this country is overrun by sponging layabouts; not to mention work shy, skiving, thieving scumbags; immigrants and ‘asylum seekers’; junkies and whores all trying to bleed the system dry and deprive the hard working masses of a luxury or two. Hospitals are apparently filled to bursting with fat, pregnant, twelve year-old alcoholic smokers that the run down, disease ridden, inefficient, foreigner infested NHS can’t cope with.

The root cause of the lack of state sponsored charity, our unwillingness to pay more taxes and the exagerations of the fascist media, as well as chronic under-funding of the NHS is that, as a nation (just as with its citizens), we spend too much on other things we don’t need. Our so called nuclear deterrent, for example, deters no one because there are no nuclear aggressors apart from those other countries who possess a ‘deterrent’, and what chauvinistic nonsense is it that causes us to believe they would want to attack this third-rate garbage-can, backwater anyway. Single weapons crudely put together or stolen by terrorist don’t count. Nothing will deter them! Our military ‘defence’ budget as a whole is a gross waste of taxes because it isn’t a defence budget. We have a massive globally capable aggressive military capability, which can launch attacks anywhere in the world with far more deadly force that Adolf Hitler ever imagined possible. Why? For money, for the rich weapons manufacturing and distribution industry’s share holders and to maintain a tight control over global economic power distribution. As permanent members of the UN Security Council we can influence global policy to our own benefit for ever.

The state controlled media machinery ensures we all (almost) believe that it is more important to spend many tens of billions of pounds every year maintaining this offensive capability, than to spend a fraction of the money on all the causes currently supported by charitable donations. They tell us we have to invade countries and patrol the world because of threats from rogue regimes and terrorists when these threats only exist because of massive resentment caused by centuries of invading countries and ‘patrolling’ the world. Every single action taken militarily anywhere in the world by us, our allies and many others sponsored by this country results in huge sums of money pouring into the pockets of the super-rich. These same super-rich who manage the media on behalf of their political lacqueys and who pacify us by ensuring we feel good about all the money we spend on the other goods and services they sell us, because we can’t live without them, and which they lend us the money to buy.

If you don’t know them leave those who do to grieve in peace.
I am sick of national and global second-hand, state and media encouraged mourning! Why in the name of anything holy should I mourn the death of anybody I didn’t know or stand silent for half a second for something that doesn’t affect me. I DIDN’T KNOW THEM and neither did you (except their friends and relatives of course)! I do often (but not always) experience shock and feel sad when I read about or see terrible images of deprivation and death around the world but I rarely feel the need to join in a mass hysterical chest-beating tear fest. And when it does happen it is because of suppressed feelings I know I am transferring to the immediate events. I recognise this (usually) and mourn appropriately for whatever loss it was that I actually suffered and then get on with my life as best I can. I suggest the great British public enrols on some mass group therapy course and rids itself of its extremely damaging, nationally self-harming demons before the entire nation is sectioned and stuffed in a padded cell by the United Nations. I know this will not happen in any form, by the way, because the state machine likes it just the way it is, ha ha ha ha haaaaaaaaaaaa. And who runs the United Nations ayway, ha ha ha ha haaaaaaaaaaaa?

This includes the annual dirge of military and state sponsored ‘remembrance’. The people who died ‘for us’in the appalling events of the 20th century must be spinning in their graves at the nation their bravery spawned. Spewed out of the filth of vile, avoidable and unnecessary war is a diseased, bloated, arrogant nation of poorly educated and easily manipulated selfish idiots. They continue to make the same mistakes that led to the previous wars and that is just how the state machine, super-rich and the warmongers like it. They use the annual shenanigans to inject us with another regular dose of clear thinking and free will suppressants. It is easy to avoid war by recognising the true causes, removing the irritants whose self-interest encourages it and repairing damage before it gets out of hand. Far better, for example, to give billions of pounds to an economically desperate twenties and thirties Germany than spend much more fighting for our freedom in the forties, and paying for it for the next fifty years! Not to mention the guilt fest afterwards that led to the creation of a poorly conceived state of Israel and the massive cost to us all that this has caused. That is another subject for another day. Our own royal family’s inbred relations were single-handedly responsible for the shocking depravation and injustices that turned Russia on its head at the start of the century and contributed to the instability of Europe. All avoidable when power is properly distributed and kept in check.

Only flawed institutions need to be protected from words.
Another subject close to Mr Grumpy’s heart is freedom of expression, censorship and state controlled moral standards, and closely related organisations who exploit this weak form of government. It is an act of cowardice and a foul attack on natural freedom to in any way censor the expression of any original human thought no matter how offensive or unpalatable. I don’t care what form the expression takes either; be it written, spoken, pictorial, private or public. Where such expressions are provably factually incorrect or extracted or derived from others against their will, I believe some form of redress should be available in an appropriate and similar forum (including seeking punitive damages in court) but where it was created for the purpose of contextually relevant entertainment there should be no such recourse, ever.

This is particularly true for expressions of opinions or humour or any other art form concerning spiritual, religious or philosophical and other belief systems of any kind. For one simple reason: it is ALL nothing more than a matter of opinion formed on a psychologically unsound basis. If up to now no human had ever believed in anything non-physical whatsoever and suddenly people had started expressing strong religious opinions about fantastical beings and entities they would be locked up in padded cells, en masse! To have the law of the land defend their delicate sensibilities and massage their well founded insecurities is a crass injustice. It is the very essence of political vote rigging and desperation when the state is mobilised to protect one set of opinions against easily provable more reasoned opinions. Political correctness has completely floated in fairy land when it defends the indefensible; not surprising though when the head of state is the ‘defender of the faith’, absurd!

I say elsewhere on this site that I believe in God and that I suspect He doesn’t want me to harm others in anyway including psychologically. What I say above potentially contradicts this because if I insult someone’s belief system I am likely to do them harm at some level. True, but I can’t always have what I want and neither does God, but I could be wrong and suffering from a delusion. There might be no God and even if there is he has obviously given me free will including the freedom to defy Him! I prefer to believe that if someone mocks or insults my beliefs it is up to me how I choose to react. My preference would be to laugh along and side-swipe with a suitably insulting retort of my own, and if someone delivers an apparently devastating critique on the whole basis of my entire life philosophy I can simply choose to ignore them. I do not need the state or any law to defend me unless they resort to violence because I’m not allowed to kick ten tons of shit out of them in my own defence, which is what they would deserve, of course!

A good example (nearly) of inappropriate censorship is the recent attempt by the Evangelical Alliance to prevent the BBC showing the stage musical parody based on the Jerry Springer show. This is the same so called Christian lobbying group who ruined lives up and down the country with claims of ritual satanic child abuse, which were completely unfounded and were later proved to have been maliciously made in the first place. This is the same group who once published a list of items that could be found in peoples homes identifying them with cults that included candles and many other perfectly ordinary household items! And so what anyway, as I say above, theirs is just a completley un-provable opinion! The world is infested with evangelicals who try to convince themselves, their children and education authorities that they don’t believe in evolution and they have the pseudo-scientific gobbledegook to prove it, in order that evolution shouldn’t be falsely taught to their deranged children.

Presumably their American cousins have failed miserably to ban the Jerry Springer show itself because it puts off potential recruits when the nutters on the show claim to be Christian. Same here, they are using ‘bad language’ as one reason, but what really upsets them is a man in a nappy (diaper) claiming to be Jesus and gay, and they can’t handle gay in the Evangelical Alliance, oh boy, that gets them going. The only other people I have ever met who become aggressive about gays are people who are clearly struggling with their own sexuality. The trouble with the modern cult of Jesus as opposed to traditional Christianity is the massive reliance on identifying the presence of God they feel within as Jesus. And he is a man they believe never had sex with a woman! The real issue is creative censorship. This is a musical about a ridiculous show about ridiculous egomaniacs, not a musical about or condemning Christianity. Even if it was, the insecurities being regularly paraded by the Evangelical Alliance and their current political sponsors should not ever be allowed to influence political, moral or legal decisions in this country. Write to your MP, now! This must also be true for other groups who have already been allowed to exert exactly this kind of influence. This unfair treatment is not solved by allowing Christians the same ‘protection’, but by removing it from all other groups!

3000+ annual deaths on our roads is mass murder.
At a more down-to-earth level, Mr Grumpy would like to let off some steam about the state of the nation’s driving. Unlike most of the maniacs on the road, I know I am a bad driver so I do what I can to avoid combining my limitations with other people’s faults by using simple common sense, especially at high speeds. But, what about the rest of you moronic psychopaths? HAVE YOU NEVER HEARD OF THE F’ING 2 SECOND RULE. That is the gap (including reaction time) considered safe by all experts at all speeds, in good conditions (light, dry, not icy or slippery), you MUST leave between you and vehicle in front if you don’t want to die when they crash. So when I leave a 2 second gap WHY DO YOU DRIVE UP MY ARSE or overtake me so that you are only then 2 seconds closer to your destination (assuming you don’t plough into the back of the car you are now up the backside of)???? Idiot!!!! Why don’t you just drive into a wall now and get it over with? When you see pictures on TV of motorway pile-ups, they were caused by people just like you ignoring the 2 second rule and nothing else at all. Somebody might have crashed for some other reason but the single cause of the pile-up was driving too close, simple. By the way, leaving gaps speeds up average traffic flow, as does letting people in at junctions and not blocking roundabouts or yellow boxes! If we all follow the rules we will all get everywhere faster with far less risk, imagine that - stress free too.

On the subject of roundabouts, how did you people ever pass your driving tests? How????? INDICATE (signal) you dicks, and indicate appropriately! One of the most irritating things is people indicating right apparently for no reason other than they are not turning left or because a small roundabout is offset to the left of the carriageway or there is a kink in the road. If you are carrying straight on the same road the roundabout interrupts, by all means indicate left as you approach your exit but why indicate right before hand, you are going straight on stupid? If it is a long way round to the straight on exit and you feel you must indicate right, stop indicating as soon as you pass the previous exit (if there was one) and indicate left to show you intend to exit. You will cause accidents and delays if you continue to indicate randomly because you vaguely recall your instructor telling you you should indicate at roundabouts! The Driver Standards Agency has a good website at highwaycode.gov.uk if don’t believe me. Also, don’t use roundabouts to overtake me you idiots. Why are you in such a hurry to die? Organise your bloody lives so that the few minutes (and it does only add up to a few - if any) you gain risking your lives everyday aren’t so important any more.

Cars are a privilege and luxury, not a right. Use them responsibly and considerately and we can all keep them but you can be sure that in a dark Whitehall basement somebody somewhere is already planning to take them away to some degree or other just to reduce the carnage, 10 deaths a day for crying out loud. Many caused by alcohol of course, so show a little self-control and dignity and try to survive without a drink when you know you are going to drive. It’s not hard, or do you need help with your problem; it’s freely available to non-cowards across the land.

NIMBYists never contribute anything to the wider community!
I do not agree with namby-pamby, self-interested, environmentalist jobby-jabber about cars destroying the environment. Poor car and fuel design and manufacture contributes to the excessive use of resources and to unnecessary pollution but despite a concentrated period of research (see later for more thoughts on that subject) and decades of brainwashing the JURY IS STILL OUT on the consequences, and it is in the nature of this ‘advancing’ species and the fact that the less privileged here and particularly overseas are going to demand the same, that there must be a massive global increase in car production and usage. All other forms of public transport and social engineering schemes posed as alternatives involve just as much pollution and resource wastage. A bus or tram might sometimes carry a full load but usually, even if it has as many as twenty people on it, it is still a huge resource and fuel hungry vehicle, and it never stops! Same for trains and planes and all construction plans to move industries and people around. What we have to do is improve the efficiency of production and sustainability and re-use of materials and use new fuels. Electricity does not help the environment because power stations are pretty inefficient and filthy. I do not include nuclear power here because although it is controversial because of its historical link to weapons, it is actually totally clean, provided you deal with the waste and don’t have uncontrollable accidents (that’s another rant), why are the brilliant minds of the world taking so long to conquer fusion power (is the oil lobby holding them back)? By the way governments around the world ARE investing huge sums of money in cold fusion despite the alleged failure of the original Pons & Fleischman experiment. The two scientists concerned continue to have their research in the field funded, what’s going on there then? Call me a conspiracy theorist if you like; it’s better than ‘fat Scottish know-it-all twat’.

One of the biggest piles of hog-wash spurted out in a self-masturbatory frenzy by the anti-car campaign in this country is the nonsense that we are about to be swamped by a tsunami of cars as car usage doubles in the coming decades. How???? Are we expecting a doubling of the population (damn those illegal immigrants and our irresistable road networks)? Maybe we going to allow ten year-olds to drive and all the people who currently don’t feel the need or who stubbornly refuse to drive are going to see the light, and we are living longer of course. Even if you combine these possible sources you won’t get anything like a doubling of cars on our roads. So what is going on? NIMBYism, that’s what. Most of these pressure groups have at their heart a dedicated NIMBYist who doesn’t want a bypass built over their land or who doesn’t want a new housing estate (with its associated traffic) spoiling their view and the value of their property, or in some other way wants to avoid localised increases in traffic (with its associated decreases elsewhere) or they just failed basic arithmetic at school.

Saving the planet will prevent the future evolution of giant insects.
Global warming? Bollocks! This is the biggest single area where science is embarrassing itself. It is impossible to know by any method other than the invention of a time machine what happens next. Plus: the earth in relatively recent (pre industrial) times has frequently been much warmer and much colder than now for varying periods of time. There is not one definitive shred of evidence that humanity is the cause or in any way contributing to global warming in a way that anything other than humans will ever care about, which may or may not continue for a totally unpredictable period of time.

When humanity is extinct in a few million years, and it will be, something else will dominate this planet, post or pre meteor impact or super volcano explosion. The continents will continue to shift plunging habitats into the oceans and changing climates irreversably. The earth’s magnetic field will switch dramatically and the angle of tilt to the plain of our orbit will change and as a consequence of all of this nothing, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING will be then as it is now. So, what are we trying to save, conserve or preserve? Why are we trying to interfere with the natural evolutionary process that all of our natural human activities are part of, in the naturally selected evolutionary dominant position we currently have? We are, apparently trying to prove that we are super-natural, god like even; trying to deny that the cuddly, furry, funny, cosy creatures and environment we care so much about is more important than what will evolve as a result of our activities if we don’t try to ’save the planet man’. We are just one little branch of the evolutionary chain. We cannot influence in any way the eventual outcome because forces far far greater than us will have the last laugh. I understand that some of you desperately want to keep it all nice and diverse for your grand children but don’t kid yourselves that you will acheive any more than that.

What is certain is that the powers that be are scaring themselves shitless about it and they want us on side. This could be because they believe the scientific BS or because they know the earth is naturally warming and won’t stop until we are all dead (as has happened many times before). The UK solution is to panic us all into saving resources and energy (while sustaining economic growth), while the American solution is to massively increase expenditure in space exploration, particularly concentrated on Mars. The super-rich have obviously decided that they want Mars (or the Moon at a pinch) habitable before they or their offspring perish in the fires of an earthly Armageddon. The Evangelical Alliance meantime will weep for all the souls they failed to save and scramble for their concordances to find the passage in the bible that allows for the existence of a life-sustaining Mars after judgement day.

Remember, scientists’ mortgages are paid for by research grants directly or ultimately. Once a theory is popular it is possible to milk it for payments for years. It is the nature of science and statistics that it can be used to demonstrate all manner of probabilities, which always need to be supported by further research.

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