Last Post

For reasons of New Year resolutions amongst other things, I’ve decided not to post anymore. Resolution being, stop fucking about so much on the Internet and focus on more serious and profitable stuff. So a few sites I visit are being cut, notably Blogger and Buffyguide.

I had hoped that I might get something or a readership, but sadly this has not panned out. Blogger seems to be more of a personal journal than a place to editorialise, fair enough.

I do slightly worry people seem more distracted by trivia and celebrity dross (witness a lot of TV and endless celebrity magazines) than serious issues that will affect them, like high taxes and increasing threats to their freedom. But this concerns me less as I’m probably leaving UK in a couple of years. Very tired of paying taxes for others.

So if you have read any of this blog, thank you, I would urge you to consider your personal response the issues the country faces.

Good bye.

Hazel Blears vs Hazel Blears

In a fight to the death....

I've never held this person in much regard, but this is a new low even for this micro-brain. From the BBC:

"Cabinet minister Hazel Blears has joined a protest over plans to close part of a hospital in her constituency. The proposals for Hope Hospital in Salford, Greater Manchester, are part of the controversial NHS shake-up"

This is a quite staggering abandonment of collective responsibility. As a cabinet minister, you support government policy or resign. In recent years there has been a creeping policy of letting cabinet ministers be “absent” during votes they are known to disagree with. This is shameful enough. But to actively oppose your own government’s policy, seems to me to be facing both ways at once on an issue.

She should surely be sacked at once.

And the reason for this split personality? A glance at the election result for 2005 should answer that:

Hazel Blears, Labour 13,007
Norman Owen, Liberal Democrat 5,062
Laetitia Cash, Conservative 3,440
Lisa Duffy, UK Independence Party 1,091

Her majority: 7,945
Turnout: 42.4 %

Simple self-preservation. She knows that hospital closures are hot issues, and on a very low turnout, she probably fears the Lib-Dems could run a local campaign and knock her off.

It doesn’t justify hypocrisy.

(Yet again) think for yourself

The BBC for some reason seems down on satellite navigation systems. I don't know why, but scarcely a week goes by without the channel carrying some story from a hapless drone who cheerfully announces "I used SatNav and ended up in a river"

I always seem to find myself thinking 'too bad you didn't drown' but anyway, there's never any investigation if they actually used it right, or installed it properly, just a general kinda 'mock the technology and those who use it' type approach.

So this Christmas I decided to buy a kit, but the significant other wants to buy me a gift so I say okay, SatNav. Now the system I wanted was basic. It needed two key features, to have a postcode search facility and not to have any installation of software, or consult our website or speak to asshole customer services, just plug-in and go. This is also the cheapest. I don't need speed camera warning, or indicators I'm exceedng the speed limit, or restaurant reviews (!) just the basics. I even told her "TomTom 1 or SatMan 1" the two entry level kits.

What do I get? A viamichelin X-950-T ???

So I say, does this have post code search facility then? "I don't know" she cheerfully announces. So the primary criteria for purchase is in doubt. So I open it and it's all "Install this CD into windows and download this, blah, blah" So the second criteria ~ gone. Oh yes, and she bought it from a fucking website, so there's no-one you can actually talk to face to face.

And all because her asshole workmate, who had obviously been listening to the BBC says "TomTom aren't any good, it says so on the TV"

So we have an argument ~ help me, how much more direct can I be?

Hot, steamy sex

Yes, I thought that might get your attention.

I sometimes look at the website dedicated to a sci-fi come sci-fantasy show, and like most of these things they have a forum to discuss various issues. Anyway one poster was making a comment about how he suspected women to have had more sexual partners than men. I didn’t think this was so, and hence did a simple post asking contributors how many times they’d gotten down and dirty with the opposite sex.

To my utter amazement, two of the posters, that I believe to be middle aged reported, zero (why I was surprised that a middle aged sci-fi obsessive was a virgin I really don’t know). Anyway I drew quite a bit of flack for the post; sometimes I’m deliberately provocative and anyway they are mostly lefties, so fuck ‘em.

But ZERO ? I mean if you are ugly and can’t get girls, then there are hookers, and anyway, cut your hair, get contact lenses, work out, buy some new clothes, learn a few jokes and pretty soon you’ll have a girl. (Indeed, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realised just how easy dating is, especially, for me anyway, if you are confident bordering on arrogant).

I mean, I honestly can’t see how life can be anything but “alcohol
- free wine” without the thrill of dating, the excitement of first time sex, the joy of regular sex, the closeness with a woman it brings, the ups and downs, the passion.

Why would anyone deny themselves such a thing ?

There are still one or two women in the world I would really, really like to sleep with, apart from the obvious actress types, there are two women from that very board, who I’ve never met, but they seem awesome. One is an British Indian girl who seems just to drip sex from every pore, the other an American, who tragically now has a kid with someone else, but she’s beautiful and cool and smart, literally everything you could want (who I actually did consider going to the States for ~ not mad or anything but that’s the passion thing!), so surely, if you were stuck on zero, you could date them or someone else from the board?

I’m not saying everyone finds it easy, but it seems like these guys have quit trying, that has to be bollocks, doesn’t it.

New British nukes

Tony Blair announced yesterday that Britain would replace our fleet of Trident nuclear submarines when they reach the end of their life.

Now you may wonder why a politician with only months left, feels the need to comment on a procurement issue 20 years hence, but that’s a side issue.

For the life of me, I cannot see any strategic or tactical reason to possess these continent-busting weapons. The argument for renewing the system as I understand it is as follows:

- we don’t know what risks we may face and therefore we’d better retain the ability to utterly destroy all of mankind, just in case.

This is insane logic. If you don’t know what risks you face, you must surely predict an them, otherwise you wind up in a state of total paranoia. In addition, if it follows that Britain needs nukes, then surely Germany, Italy and Spain also need nukes, along with Poland, the Czech Republic, Canada etc, etc Yet no-one wants this proliferation. In addition, it seems to me that if you are say, an Iranian, with war on your immediate border and a nuclear armed foe, then your needs for nukes must be immediate and pressing?

I don’t see how we can lecture Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about developing nukes, when he lives in a dangerous and unstable part of the world, whilst at the same time, cheerfully announcing, we are getting much more potent ones, when no threat is on the radar. Then there is the argument

- a rogue state might give a terrorist a nuke, and we’d need the return address to frighten them against doing so (along the MAD principle)

This is also incredible. Are we honestly saying that if a leader gave a terrorist a nuke (I really, really can’t see this, because you don’t give someone the means to destroy you, but anyway) and God forbid, London was nuked, and we traced it back to Tehran, we’d really murder 12 million people (i.e. do a double holocaust) in an afternoon? This is total bollocks.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the Americans should disarm, because as no1, you are always “on offer” so to speak, but independent British weapons? I can’t see the point. Then there is the small matter, that say £20B or whatever it finally costs, would pay for a quite useable armoured division or two with rapid deployment capabilities and self-contained transport to anywhere in 72 hours. Now that would be much more useable.

More production or rationing what we have?

I was considering this recently in light of two different factors, that are acted on by the same forces of supply and demand.

Consider water supplies. As you probably know, large parts of Britain were subject to de facto water rationing this summer. Now it takes a special kind of genius to become short of water on this wind and rain swept isle, but there are reasons for this other than just climatic ones. Sure rainfall helps, but you surely cannot be surprised that water becomes short when we use more (dishwashers, more showers etc) than before, and there are more of us through birth rate and immigration.

So even if the climate is totally stable (lets not do that one here) demand goes up and supplies are stretched. Here’s where different approached to the problem come in.

Capitalists like me say “We have money, resources and capability to satisfy our needs, lets build some more reservoirs”

Lefties and environmentalists say “We cannot build more because it will hurt bird habitats or destroy water courses (or whatever) therefore let’s ration what we have”

This is insanity. We do not progress as a species by sharing the one buffalo we killed, we dreamed up better weapons and hunting techniques to get more meat, we thought about farming not foraging to create more. We move forward as a race by seeing what we need and getting it. If we had employed rationing years ago, we’d still be shivering, with a life expectancy of 25 arguing about who gets the last bit of meat.

Similarly roads. The private motorcar is fantastic. It gives you total freedom. But given that we have more or less the same number of roads now that we had in 1980, but twice the cars, is it surprising they are becoming congested? Again, I say, build more roads, the greens say “Building more roads just encourages traffic” without realising that all they are really confirming is that latent demand exists. So they want to ration roads by congestion charges, I want to build more.

Decide for yourself what sort of world you want to live in, a world of plenty or a world where everything is rationed according to government whim (but they won’t be subject to the rationing of course, you will).

Which is better?

Alexander Litvinenko

...was very clearly, murdered by the Russian state in London, in direct violation of British law.

What made it all the more terrible is that there was no serious effort at subterfuge. If you’d wanted to make it look like a mugging, you’d get a couple of your guys to stab the bloke to death and take his wallet.

No. They fed him some kind of radioactive isotope, which realistically, only a state could come up with, and let him die horribly.

So, the method was clearly aimed at other dissidents saying, “Keep criticising us and you’ll get the same”

The “denials” are still more insulting. If they’d have said, “it may have been rogue elements in our security services, we will investigate” at least that gives them an out. But no. Their stance amounts to “we killed him, we’ll kill anyone else who criticises us, fuck you”

The Russians are not our friends, and we should on a Europe wide basis, stop trading with them until the perps of this crime are handed over ~ and someone who “died trying to escape the police in Russia” would not be acceptable. Live, questionable prisoners are what is needed. We should call the ambassador back and the EU should do the same, otherwise sanction the Kremlin killing anyone they don’t like in your territory.

Mobile finger printing

A news story today said that when the cops stop people when they are driving, they get about a 60% rate of people saying they are someone else.

I can’t believe the figure is anywhere near this high, but anyway, the cops now have some techy device that can take your fingerprints at the roadside.

Now we may first want to contemplate why so many people are breaking the law, (assuming 60% to be correct) I would start with a review of why we have criminalized quite so many people.

Second, I will not give the cops my finger-prints on the roadside. If they stop me, in a car registered to me, I see no reason to further “prove” who I am. Indeed this changes the fundamental relationship between citizen and state if I now have to prove my innocence.

Last, the fingerprint records will apparently be “kept” whether you are actually guilty of anything or not.

This is just one more step down the road to authoritarianism, one I will NOT be taking, they can bloody well arrest me.
“If you’ve nothing to hide you’ve nothing to fear” they will trumpet. Saddam Hussein could have said that. Trouble is, it seems like more or less everything is against the law in some shape or form nowadays.