The lowest form of life...

...is the person who represents himself as your friend, whilst all the time, yearning after your honey. I have, or more accurately had, a friend who did exactly this.

I watch football and it seems to upset various women, that I go to the games. Two reasons for this, one you need “male” time and second, you need a separate identity from your honey. Guys who give up on this and just cave in on every demand their girlfriend makes just end up cuckolded anyway ~ I’ve seen it happen. It’s not like I don’t take her out to dinner at least weekly, same for movies, same for theatre, comedy clubs, as well as, believe it or not ~ weekly dancing lessons.

But still she’s pissed at football, but that’s unlucky, see above.

So when you find out your “friend” has been going round her house for dinner, or taking her “shopping” because ‘you’re not there’ you find yourself mightily pissed. (Especially when he hides it from you, so nothing suspect there !!)

God, if she’d got drunk and slept with someone, okay, it happens; but this, from a “friend” is so insidious. Well he’s gone, no second chances, never speak to the fucker again. As for her, she has to see how out of order this is.

And before you get all Freudian, I used to be quite happy when the wife went off on holiday with her sis to various European sex destinations like Ibiza, or Amsterdam, so NO, it’s not jealousy or insecurity. It’s just great anger at a former friend, bewilderment she can’t seem to see it’s out of order, and disappointment in myself for not seeing a reptile, writ large.

Matt, calm down boy

My friend John R once said “Matt is jealous of you” and I didn’t believe it, and couldn’t see why he would be. But after the weekend, I kinda wonder of there is some kinda jealousy or inferiority complex, or trying to justify himself, to himself going on.

We were going to footie, and he starts on about some house he’s buying in Shropshire “Yes, I’m looking around £400K” “Okay I say, check the settlement boundary if you plan to extend” “Oh I’m not going to extend, I’m buying a listed building” “Fair enough” says I. “I don’t want to live in fucking Legoland”1

“Will you come and visit me in my mansion in Shropshire then?”2 “Sure, can’t wait, let me know when you buy it”

“You were stupid buying that house of yours in Basingstoke you know” 3 “You mean the one that’s gone from £150K to £300K in five years, surely not” “Yes, you could have invested the money better, like me as my property company is worth gazillions now” 4

“Vafa was ugly and had a big nose, blah, blah” 5

“I love Diane and I made a good choice” 6

“Big load of crap about my car(?)” 7

So pejoratives:

1. Like many other people, I live in a house built in the 1980’s ~ So what. Personally I’d never live in a listed building, as I think they offer poor accommodation at an inflated price, and I don’t want the government saying I can’t develop my house, but, each to his own
2. £400K buys you a nice house, but NOT a mansion, they are several million, even in cheap Shropshire. And, the girlfriend gets the mortgage, not matey boy, so whose house is it really?
3. This is just wrong, 100% tax free return in five years? Take it every time.
4. Good luck to anyone who can, but matey boy invested 50/50 with his dad, so access to capital is easier. Fine by me, but don’t over “big your self up” on it.
5. Everyone I know, thought Vafa was very beautiful (hell to live with, but beautiful) and anyway, each to his own, right ?
6. This is the best. On hols with his ex-g/f he meets this plain jane chick who clearly wants a hubby, and as it turns out she’s earning loads and from a rich family, two months later, he’s proposed ! Again, each to his own but are you kidding me?
7. No actually this is the best. His car is an okay sports model. His Dad bought it for him. Good luck and well done, but Puleease don’t take the piss outta me, ‘cos daddy got you a nice car

I guess John R, you were right.

Please save me from tepid bath water

So there’s this nobody woman labour MP on the radio this morning, saying how babies basically die in scalding water (!) and they covered the case of some moron whose kid was scalded.

So instead of sensibly concluding that the person who put their kid in the 70C water should be immediately sterilized as patently unfit to bear anymore children and prosecuted for neglect, the MP for dimwits everywhere smoothly concludes that;

“Anti-scald valves should be fitted to all properties”

For a brief few seconds I couldn’t believe she actually meant what she said, but she went on to explain how building regulations should be changed, so that it is physically impossible to get water above say 45C in your bath. She went onto say that this change should be retrospective and that all UK properties should be fitted with these.

Amazingly, people texted the show complaining about how they went to the cinema and the water was too hot to wash your hands….the government should take action etc. How infantile have people become if they can’t take responsibility to mix hot and cold water in the sink ??

The implications of this seemed lost on the presenter. Top of my head, I imagine potential problems of such a scheme to be:

1. Cost – at say £100 a pop, 30 million homes on the UK, just the £3Billion then
2. Doing it – can’t get a plumber now, let alone if this ever became law
3. Enforceability – some guy puts such a tap on my bath, I’m taking it straight back out

And with all due respect, the day the government tells me what temperature water its safe to bath in, and enforces this by means of legislation, is the day I leave the UK.

It’s an interesting Litmus test on how interventionist government MP’s see the population at large ~ as brainless fuckwits whose every action should be controlled and monitored. That’s the most worrying thing of all.

Drug research & testing

We need to be more logical in our approach to public policy matters especially health related ones,

There are three basic approaches you can take to testing new drugs.

1. Never test any new drugs, on anyone, so no new drugs ever ~ insane
2. Don’t test on volunteers, just release the drugs for general sale ~ more insane
3. Test on willing volunteers, after first lab, and then animal tests

What’s happened to these poor guys is desperate. But they took their chances. No-one pays you over £2,000 a pop, to test candy.

So, sorry, but if the company fulfilled its legal obligation, and was not negligent in the application of drugs, or allowed contamination in manufacture, you don’t get to sue.

Second, you don’t get to sweepingly conclude that “this proves all animal testing is pointless, as some of the animal lobby have claimed. It of course proves no such thing. Indeed animal testing has surely saved many more lives, both in not administering dangerous drugs to humans, and in terms of the new ones created.

The development of drugs has had almost unquantifiable benefits to humans. We cannot and must not abandon their development on a wave of emotion, nor must we stupidly punish the drug companies, because we feel sorry for the volunteers in this case.

The final act

Okay, I know I am given to relative extremes in the concept of personal freedom.

And I make many comments on the government taking more power to itself.

That said, allow me to present the final act.

Think about a dictatorial, future police state in the UK. What would that mean? For me, it would be the effective neutering of parliament. Sure you could keep the building open as a tourist attraction, (as for example, with captolio in Cuba) but the real power would lie with minsters. In this nightmare future, ministers can pass laws simply by ministerial edict, without reference to parliamant at all. Their word is literally law.

Sounds the stuff of Tom Clancy?

The government is currently sending through the house of commons, the "Legislative and Regulatory reform bill" an empty sounding but desperately dangerous piece of legislation.

This bill is drafted so widely, that ministers can vary almost any legislation, or enact new laws, at will, withot reference to parliament AT ALL

This is our "enabling act"

The only things excluded from this bill are:

- the power to create "new" jail sentences, or extend ones currently over two years,
- create new forcible entry rights
- compel the giving of evidence, or
- alter taxation

EVERYTHING ELSE IS PERMITTED

Indeed the bills own powers, mean even these minor restrictions, could be aboished, by the bill, once it is enacted.

So for example, the government could redefine terrorism as civil protest, or opposing the government, and legally, send you to jail for life (as that is the current sentence for terrorism) by ministerial edict, (ie Charles Clarke says it, and off you go to Strangeways or Holloway for ever. Or they could unilaterally extend parliamantary terms to say 50 years, or 500.

No, this poster is mad I hear you say?

No fewer that six Cambridge law professors, have stated that this gives ministers almost unlimited, unchecked unilateral power.

So really, this is the last piece of the jigsaw, and it is deadly dangerous. The road to Serfdom.

Tessa (see no evil) Jowell

Okay, I’ve been holding off this one, but since Gus has now reported

As I understand it, Tessa claims that:

- her husband did not tell her, that he was given a $600,000 gift, (‘cos you know, you’d never mention it would you)
- she signed the form mortgaging her home for $600,000, with no knowledge of what the money was to be invested in (‘cos we all would endanger our home and future without any questions at all), and
- she did not know that the same mortgage of $600,000 was paid off several weeks later (again, barely worth a mention)

So if you believe her,

Would you not wonder, if such a brainless fuckwitt, who doesn’t seemed concerned, when large sums of money flow around her personal affairs, is absolutely the best guardian for the public purse? Really, should she still be a minister? Surely, surely not

A similar such enquiry by the then cabinet secretary, Robin Butler in the 1980’s, cleared Jonathan Aitken of any wrongdoing. So they obviously represent a rigorous analysis of a persons affairs.