Bag's Rants

It beggars belief. They would rather starve.

I was reading this article about a dog food manufacturer offering aid to Kenya which has been hit by a drought. Causing, no surprise there, a food shortage. Doesn't everything on that continent.

Anyway instead of a bit of gratitude for the offer of 42 tons of food. It appears they are now being criticised for the offer by the Kenyan Government. Read more here.

Now, in a way, I can understand their concern, Food from a dog food manufacturer, well you make certain assumptions. But my understanding is that all dog food meets certain standards for our, oh so pampered, pets and is certainly fit for human consumption.

I think it's time these people need to face up to the situation. They are not owed a living from everyone else, although you would think so, and although we like to help they need to be flexible.

If I was starving I would eat a lot worse than the dog food offered. It seems they would rather let their people starve. I wonder what the people starving, as I'm sure the Government isn't, would say about it.

posted by Bag @ 4:37 pm 0 comments

I think this bit of opinion says it all.

Read more here on more laws but less justice by our mass production new laws Government.

posted by Bag @ 2:08 pm 0 comments

Are Hamas in power or not?

I was reading this article by the existing President that he would pursue peace with Israel. It appears mainly because they need to money which most Western Governments have said they would withhold from Hamas.

Now, maybe I'm too thick to understand but it sounded to me like his party lost the election. If so, how can he make a statement like that when Hamas has clearly said it would not recognise Israel and would push for it's destruction.

Hamas are in power now and although as president he can attempt to lead them to a sensible way forward how long does he realistically have at the helm? How long do we have before we have someone like the Iranian president who makes a mutual protection deal with Iran, Syria and some of the others, including Iraq?

A good try to save the funding but ultimately doomed to failure I suspect.

posted by Bag @ 2:02 pm 0 comments

Another knee jerk on Bird Flu.

Seems our Government wants to set up yet another DB to control, sorry, monitor what people with poultry at home are doing. Read more here. Why is it our first reaction to want to set up another DB? We are living in the Government DB age. The downside of technology.

A senior industry figure says 'We are slow to learn the lessons of foot-and-mouth.' Well, Yes, we are. But not in the way you mean. Our response to foot and mouth was to annihilate every infected animal plus any animals within a parsec of the outbreak. Regardless of the situation at those places. Where many had segregated their animals to minimise risk

Now they are trying to imply that all home reared animals need to be registered. Now I can understand about large scale production that gets into the food chain but every bit of poultry in the UK. Will they be slaughtered the first time an infected bird sets foot in Dover? I suspect so.

Some of the advice is sound like take sick birds to a vet. But let's face it responsible owners look after their livestock anyway. Do we need another layer of bureaucracy on home reared foods. Jeez, we buy goats and chickens for Africa. Do we need to leverage another 30% to cover the paperwork for what is a natural process of managing livestock?

What can be safer than food you have grown at home that you know the history of and have kept healthy. Kept away from rats and mice etc.

posted by Bag @ 1:33 pm 0 comments

Offshore support. It may be cheaper but it's frustrating.

Just been trying to get through to Netgear support. Luckily it is on a national rate number and not one of those £1 a minute with a minimum 5 minutes jobs.

Even so I spent 15 minutes waiting for a support person. Then 10 minutes spent bringing him up to date with basic questions that were in the support log but he was unaware of and repeating myself because I could hardly understand him. Then after those 10 minutes of explaining my mobile dropped the line because I went into the front room where the servers are and we were disconnected. Phoned back up only to fall directly into the queuing system again. What a bummer.

I'll have to try again on Friday.

Usually network components are plug and play so there is hardly any issues and for all the kit I have I've never needed to call before. I've been sending this issue back and forward or EMail since before Xmas. Just as well it's not critical.

posted by Bag @ 1:25 pm 0 comments

It's my sons 16th birthday today.

Sixteen. Doesn't time fly. He will be leaving school this year. Just taking his mocks at school at the moment with his exams later this year. Doesn't know what he wants to do yet so looks like he's off for further education in his favourite subjects. He's a bright lad but his way of taking each day as it comes and not having any long term plans is slightly disconcerting to me, someone who likes to plan ahead.

Him growing into a man makes you think about other things though. He is, supposedly, my attempt at immortality by passing on my genes. Yet at the same time I want his to be careful who he passes his genes onto. I try not to be hypocritical as I remember what I was like when I was younger.

I think my time for imparting my hard earned experience is slipping away. I hope I've taught him enough basic morals to make a good life for himself. One where, hopefully, he doesn't take as much money off me as he does now. I've told him he needs to look after me in my old age but from his look and smile I may be backing the wrong horse there.

Anyway here I am with a cake and everything and there he is off out with his mates. Oh well, all grown up now.

posted by Bag @ 3:45 pm 0 comments

And these are the Guardians of Justice.

It seems that the police involved in the de Menezes assassination have been caught editing a log during a meeting after the event. Read more here.

And still no sign of Justice. If this was anyone of us we would have been in jail faster than you can blink. Now it appears that we can't trust what is going on at all. Confirming what we have felt all alone about this case. The next thing we here is 'We know a crime has been committed but we don't know by whom. Therefore we are unable to proceed with prosecutions. All staff involved have been given a good telling off.'

Well let's start with getting them all for perverting the course of Justice. We can then work from there.

And we wonder why respect for the Police is diminishing rapidly.

posted by Bag @ 3:18 pm 0 comments

Caption compitition.

Seen this caption compitition in the electronic Telegraph.

Go have a look at the article. I couldn't see the comments box so I had to send an EMail with my comment which was 'Blair practises for his next meeting with Bush on Iran.'

Have not seen it in the comments section yet. They must have a backlog. ;)

posted by Bag @ 2:57 pm 0 comments

Maybe it's time to reconsider.

I came across this a couple of weeks ago and then lost it in the endless pursuit of yet more links when my browser crashed.

It's an article about the references to the 12th Imam by the Iranian President. Read more here. Looks like out Iranian buddies are walking alone a path that we will have a problem with. Israel has had it, with or without our help. We can't help them without Genocide. They can't help themselves without being accused of aggression.

On the +ve side with Hamas winning the election any more attacks could result in an Israeli invasion of a hostile country with UN support. Everybody wins providing Israel kills lots in the invasion. I'll need to think about that a bit more.

Well. I must confess my original belief on the olden day suicide bombers was that their current life was so hellish that there had to be something better and it was promised in their religion so they went off to improve their lot. Not something I would do but I could understand it. Then along came Sid. One of the July 7th bombers. That didn't fit into my model and although, in a way, I could understand what he had done it changed the way I thought about these people.

Now I have come to the conclusion that we are going about this whole business the wrong way. We need to rethink our strategy, if you can call what we have now a strategy, for dealing with this sort of person.

Why must we try and change everything in the world into something similar to what we have here. Women are treated badly! So what! There are women suicide bombers out there. They don't have democracy! So what! We don't have it either except in name. They want to convert the world to Islam! So what! We want to convert the world to Christianity!

Why don't we do one of two things;

1) Build a virtual wall round these places and just pay them for their oil at agreed checkpoints where only the oil flows through one way and our payments the other.
2) Nuke everything. Go in and take the oil killing everything that moves. Then they can be at peace with Allah.

Any other options?

posted by Bag @ 8:38 pm 1 comments

Google censorship.

I was going to comment but spotted this instead on Talk Politics.

Nothing else to say really.

posted by Bag @ 9:58 pm 0 comments

Automation in the NHS.

I've got back after a visit to the doctors with my granddaughter earlier today. It seems she is poorly. Wow! Could that be why we took her for a visit? Never mind.

At the practice, why do they call it practice anyway it's a bit worrying, they informed us that she has missed out on some injections. What! How did that happen? She has been there for weighing an measuring every two weeks without fail. The health visitor sees her on those visits and nobody noticed that she was missing some vital shots. It seems that the injections are automatically sent out by the reception. Well ours were not and by the sound of it they were not the only ones. In the meantime we have to give her some medicine and bring her back on Tuesday.

So I tried to book an appointment for Tuesday. Can't do that, you need to call on Tuesday to book it. What is the point of this £1B, just for the NW, NPfIT computerised system that is being installed if you can't book an appointment a few days in advance?

I am involved in the NPfIT programme and know for a fact that neither of these are computer problems. The missing injections are probably because they don't use the automatic printing of appointments as it screws up theirarchaicc method of manually allocating resources and the other one is to meet the Government targets of seeing everyone inside two days. If I book more that two days in advance I am a failed statistic. The best way to not fail is to stop people booking anything over a day. Voila, an artificial target met. They also do that with surgery appointments. Read more here.

All this extra money doesn't seem to make the system better. Maybe we need some moreconsultantss to go in and see where all the money is going. Give them a mirror as an aid.

posted by Bag @ 6:43 pm 0 comments

It was bloody obvious Cameron was a Blair rip off.

Oh! Peter Mandleson has branded Cameron a Blair rip off. Read more here.

I only seen twenty seconds of him in a soundbite on the telly after his initial outing in Parliament plus reading some of the blogs but it was obvious he was not going to be the big savior we wanted. I suspected he had been cloned. Unfortunately, it could very well be that this guy could be in power next to continue the last few years.

We need to get rid of Blair so well that no one wants to copy his snake oil salesman's techniques.

Please, Lord, please. A lot of people are relying on divine intervention. The masses seem to be hypnotised.

posted by Bag @ 5:55 pm 0 comments

Whistleblowing.

Just reading this article about whistleblowers in Scotland. There is a telephone number to call if you want to inform on someone and they have published some data on how it's being doing.

Not very well I'm afraid. It seems that of the cases investigated so far 1/6th were false. Only six out of thirty six calls were passed to the police. What a surprise, people are calling up to put a bit of pressure on those they don't like. The investigations cost has probably exceeded any saving they made with the six caught.

I particularly liked 'David O'Connor, Glasgow branch secretary, added: "There is an element of people reporting things that are incorrect or untrue and I am slightly worried about that." '. An element. Jeez, 83%, 5/6th so far is classed as an element.

Most people can't be bothered now. I know I wouldn't be if I knew someone doing a cash job or nicking some staples from our local DWP office.

Meanwhile, the real whistleblowers are being prosecuted for passing along to the public what they want to know. Makes you wonder why our Government doesn't have a line for that direct to the media.

posted by Bag @ 5:38 pm 0 comments

The cracks widen in Iraq.

The Iraqis are starting to get their feet under the table and flexing their muscles. Read more here.

If they don't need our help is it not time we withdrew some of our troops and let them start on their own two feet?

Of course we would have difficulty when our undercover troops are caught. We would be dependent on their mercy. So, better bring our undercover guys back as well and leave them too it.

Win, win all round.

posted by Bag @ 5:20 pm 0 comments

Finally, A voice of reason on extinction.

For perhaps the first time a scientist comes out with a different view on the species extinction issue that has been shouted about for a while now. Read more here.

Personally, I've always been of the opinion that the world is changing. Some of it caused by us and some not. Although we get the blame for the lot. All species need to adapt, including us, or die. Darwins theory in practice. If we can save some animals in custom built habitats or putting aside areas of land then fine but the less cute animals are likely to die in droves. A fact of life.

Let's see what the conservationists say about this. Let's see if it is factual or just emotional.

I've said this before. We need to get together and work out a realistic way forward. Otherwise things we can do nothing about will attract resources which would be better spent because of emotional blackmail. We need to be realistic. And not forget that extinction includes us if we get it wrong.


Contrary to the ecologists, nature does not stand still and does not maintain the kind of "equilibrium" that guarantees the survival of any particular species - least of all the survival of her greatest and most fragile product: man.
-- Ayn Rand, "The Anti-Industrial Revolution," The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution

posted by Bag @ 2:43 pm 0 comments

Avoiding another defeat. A sign of weakness.

Blair has 'hinted' at a compromise over the schools reform. Read more here. Not exactly in line with his no compromise stance of before.

Clearly he is concerned about another rebellion and failure. The previous failures were a blow that caused a stall, a crack in the armour and for the first time a significant sign of weakness.

Now is the time to push. ID cards, Road Charging, Terrorism Legislation. Could it all be falling apart?

posted by Bag @ 2:29 pm 0 comments

Troop movements.

Reading this about British troops going to Afghanistan. I've read on a few blogs that Afghanistan is next to Iran as if that implies we will be going in. I don't think so. Particularly in light of this article on the US military fighting capability. Personal I don't think we could go into Iran even if we wanted to. It would be bad enough if Iraq had never happened but now it would be a disaster. We would just be inviting them over here to make it worse. I know Blair would deny the connection but who believes him now anyway.

I'm coming more and more convinced that there will be nukes going off in the next few years. It won't be from Iran or North Korea though. It'll be from us. We just could do without a ground war against people who don't care about dying and will send their kids out as human mine detectors and bombs.

posted by Bag @ 9:15 pm 0 comments

Surely not.

Iran accuses UK of helping bombers in Iran. Read here.

Funds go missing that was meant for Iraqi reconstruction. Read here.

Disaster probe being blocked. Read here.

The US tries to blackmail India to get it's own way. Read here.

UK sends more troops abroad. Read here.

The UK's waste management policies seem a load of rubbish. Read here.

Financial trouble in the NHS. Read here.

A political party is having a leadership contest. Read here.

And, that whale is still in the news. Read here.

So little changes, so much to comment on and no time. Working on a bid at the moment.

posted by Bag @ 5:22 pm 0 comments

This will teach him and make a point.

Nobody else is going to torture and murder anyone after this sort of sentencing is carried out.

This US officer who, it appears, was tried by his own family for the death of an Iraqi general whilst in custody has, surprise surprise, been reprimanded, Ouch, and fined $6K. Read more here. That will punish him and make a point to others who would want to do such things.

Jeez, the court martial must have cost more.

US justice in action. Makes to wonder really why they are hated all over the world. Can't really think why maybe it will come to me.

posted by Bag @ 5:44 pm 1 comments

The irony in this tickles me.

It's not often that the people that force their will on others get the comeuppance but this could be one of these times. Sad that he died but at least he went the way he wanted everybody else too. Read the story here.

A lesson for us? Yes. Will we listen? Nah.

posted by Bag @ 12:18 pm 0 comments

What is it with these people?

I just watched one of the Lib Dems on the BBC News 24 channel this morning. I just couldn't help myself from laughing.

This woman was talking about the disgraced MP Oaten regarding his 23 year old 'Rent Boy'. If a 23 year old can be called a boy. Read more here.

I thought it was his mum at first because she said 'That doesn't sound like him at all' 'He wouldn't do that' etc. The fact he resigned instantly and didn't threaten to sue mean the report must have been spot on. Looks like she doesn't know him as well as she thought. Which could still leave her his mum as that seems to be the norm today. My son wouldn't rob/kill/rape/kidnap/take drugs. You hear it from them all. He clearly thought a lot of her as she had been trying to contact him with little success. Clearly a close friend.

He clearly decided to stray, he decided to a man, he decided to go for the vacant leaders job. Little did he know how much his own life would come under scrutiny and his little secret would come out. These politicians think they can get away with anything. You can't put yourself in the public eye and not have your secrets come out nowadays. Going for leader caused a spotlight to follow him and he was caught with his pants down, so to speak. Could even have been leaked by someone in our Government. MI5 must know and being in the closet is a sin to our security services.

Although I think his private life is his own. Politicians need to be whiter than white regarding anything out of the norm. Having an affair is clearly OK to politicians. A lot of them have done so with the women who are chasing the power a politician has. Many have not been caught yet I'm sure but as we get closer to elections it starts to come out. But, a relationship with a man. That's a no no if would want to be PM. Excluding Maggie of course.

posted by Bag @ 2:19 pm 2 comments

Let's not confuse the issue with Facts.

Seems like Canada is going the same way as the UK with their intent on handguns. Read more here. Even going as far as to blame the US where the opposite policies are in effect and crime is reducing. Read more here.

What I don't understand is why the public in places like Canada don't look around at other places, like the UK, where these laws have been enacted and see what a disaster it has been. The only tangible result is that law abiding people have been deprived of a hobby. In the UK we have an excuse. We are just stupid.

The politicians, in a way, I understand. They want to make a stand to differentiate themselves but even in Canada it seems that non delivery of election promises makes no difference. It takes something to be scared of.

How similar to the UK they are.

posted by Bag @ 1:37 pm 0 comments

As if it is not bad enough.

Now it appears that 'experts' say that there should be a total ban on smacking. Read more here.

Are things not bad enough?

It is plain that parents are losing control of their kids on a daily basis and, in my opinion, this can only be because there is no punishment for anything they do. How do you chastise a eight year old. Ban them from going out? In this day and age if they see the outside of their home they are on their way to school, if they want to go that is. They will be quite happy staying in playing games. Stop their pocket money? They will just nick it and then what do you do? No, a quick smack and they soon learn.

I smacked my kids, Oh! what an evil b4$^4&d I am. But they didn't need it beyond ten or so because they understand crime and punishment. But, what about the parents who really punch their kids? I believe that the punishment is there for those that do that to their children if it is required but we rarely do that. Why is that? It's because we want to make this less controversial. So going to Mr Lunatic and trying to stop him is not the same as going to Mr Ordinary and stopping him. Then they can be seen to be doing something. We stop thousands a year, they say, but the odd one, the real b4$^4&d, is amazingly enough the ones that slip the net. Why is that? Is it because he doesn't cooperate yet the other suckers do because they think they have nothing to fear?

It does not do you any good to think these people are out to help you. As all these do gooders then blame the parents for lack of control and fine or jail them for the kids bad behavior.

No wonder so many people are not having kids and leave it to the 'child bearing class'. They by the way in general seem to be the worse when it comes to kids out of control. But being on the social they have no money to be fined and you can't jail them as they have lots of kids to look after, usually on their own. It's expensive to look after them to send mummy away for a few days to teach her a lesson.

It's the classic situation. Let's interfere in something that has been working OK for hundreds, if not thousands, of years because we think it is a bad idea and then make it compulsory because we are always right. We pay these guys to do this. Why is that? If there was some sort of study that performed an analysis and came to a conclusion on smacking then I would be happier. Not some 'experts' working for children's rights or the UN who surely have other things to do.

Thank God I don't have to bring up kids in this day and age.

posted by Bag @ 12:39 pm 0 comments

Busy week.

Been up at the DoH in Leeds for a few days on a project. Stuck in traffic on every trip for some reason it takes me three hours to get there but only an hour and a half to get back. People don't believe that but it's true. Then the public car parks in Leeds want £6.40 per day and it needs to be in coins. So, my first day it was a bit of a blow to find the money as I don't normally carry any. Glad I get it all back on expenses as I'm going to be there for a few months. They are making me work for my money at the moment.

I've been able to browse the blogs from work so things have not been too bad but posting has been awkward. I've also been checking Mr FreeMarket's 'The Slaughtered Socialist' forum, come along Mr FM will make you welcome, and found this on his blog which I thought was worth a read so follow this link for man's main downfall.

posted by Bag @ 10:30 am 0 comments

That's the whole IDea.

Reading this article about ID cards and that they must be compulsory. I just had to laugh. They need to be if tracking everyone is the whole point in this ridiculous policy. They want to have everybody cataloged and filed away. It makes it easier to control your subjects when they have to provide ID every time they want to use a public loo. That was how it went in Soviet Russia and, as I've said before, they would have loved the technology we have now. No-one, and I mean no-one, would have been able to interfere with the ruling elite if they had this technology in Russia. If it was just for social fraud then only those claiming would need it. You don't have one then you can't claim. I don't even think that is right either but they are so arrogant in their calls for these cards they don't even attempt to introduce them like that.

Soon everything will be recorded on this database, all your financial transactions, your travel itinary when linked with the car database, the channels you watch on TV. What hand you scratch your balls with. Won't be long before the card records everything you say and do and stores it forever. Storage is cheap, video compression and analysis is getting better every day. After all, if you have nothing to hide.

Clearly our MPs do have things to hide. Surely even those clowns are starting to wake up to the fact they will be included in this database. Even MPs, with IQ's normally associated with microscopic pond life, must realise they won't be excluded. Could this trigger the opposition parties? These, unlikely as it seems, could be one of our saviors as we as a people don't do anything about it. We are British, stiff upper lip and all that. We whine but that's it so our beloved leaders just carry on regardless. Luckily, in a way, we are being augmented with foreigners who vote with exploding vests. They see this as aimed at them. They may do something about it as well.

Alternativly, bring on our £1K ID cards. Mainly because we will have to pay for all those on the social, which in reality also equated to those working for the Government. A good 50% of our population. No wonder I am so tired. Working to keep all those useless mouths fed.

posted by Bag @ 9:51 pm 0 comments

DVLA a hidden tax and punishment.

As well as the cock ups routinely performed by the DVLA and the unknown thousands of pounds it extorts from bewildered people over the SORN and being ten minutes late for taxing your car while you are on holiday I discovered a new tax put on criminals.

Whilst looking for the fee for my daughter to get her provisional license I discovered that, currently, according to the leaflet INS115, and the website, the fee for a brand new license is £38. A renewal after disqualification is £50 and a renewal after drunk driving disqualification is £75. Why? It seems to me to be a further punishment on people who were banned. A tax on them that most people won't care about. They deserve it. What a rip off. It can't cost them any more to process it.

No wonder so many people are driving without tax and insurance.

Interestingly enough the spellchecker offered DEVIL for DVLA and Spam was an option for SORN. I'll not comment on that.

posted by Bag @ 10:36 pm 0 comments

A spin detector what a great idea.

Seems there is a new computer algorithm which can show who is putting spin in their speeches in the Canadian elections. Read more here. Seems like the incumbent PM puts a lot into his and seeing as he has spend a fortune on a useless gun database, managed crime into double that of the US and appears to be miles behind his rivals in the polls I think it must be spinning like a top.

From what I can see you could feed your speeches through this and then reword them to suit. Because it's only build round weasily words. Jack Straw would cause it to blow a processor.

It's sure to be here in time for our elections. It'll probably spin like a top for all our politicians except for the BNP.

posted by Bag @ 10:28 pm 0 comments

If we did this it would be fraud or deception.

The Government continues to dip into the Lottery fund to bolster their funds in contradiction of the initial rules when the Lottery was set up. Read more here. As usual it does it by sneakily interpreting the rules to justify it's actions. More of following the rules but not the intent although the justifications for some are really weak.

Unfortunately, even with these extra funds the whole socialist wagon seems to be seizing up. Cash crisis in the NHS even with record spending. Unemployment up. More rebels are appearing. Like rats on a sinking ship. Economy is still weak. Tax fraud is a big issue. The Excel spreadsheet, List 99, isn't working too well. Education is poor. They flip flop on even minor issues like cannabis. All that from today's BBC website. Never mind recent stuff like pensions, torture, Iraq etc.

Jeez. Haven't we had enough. I know I have but, even now, I don't see any alternative. Bring on the revolution. Come back Citizen Smith. Err... Maybe not now I'm thinking about it. Bring in true democracy Blair. Make a legacy for yourself that isn't failure.

posted by Bag @ 9:38 pm 0 comments

The Leo Blair kidnap plot.

Father 4 Justice members talking about how they can get our useless Government to fix the inequality in our divorce policy. Listened into by our, cough, protectors.

Guy 1 : 'Perhaps we can kidnap Leo and show that useless b4$^4&d what it is like to lose contact with his kids.'
Guy 2 : 'That's a stupid idea.'
Guy 1 : 'Yeah, you are right.'

MI5 operative 1 : 'Oh, a kidnap plot that justifies our intrusion into everybody in the UK's lives. let's leak it to the papers as a plot that was stopped by our policies.'
MI5 Operative 2 : 'Won't they wonder why no one was prosecuted, or even arrested?'
MI5 operative 1 : 'Nope. They are too stupid. But if they do we tell them that it would jeopardize our on going surveillance.'

Read the BBC story here and the papers comments here.

posted by Bag @ 9:11 am 1 comments

Democracy in action. The ID debacle.

The public don't want it. The spineless MPs who voted for it are now rethinking it. The Lords are unhappy with it and yet the Government carries on oblivious.

Just like the Titanic. One can only hope there is no Carpathia nearby this time when the good ship hits it's iceberg.

posted by Bag @ 3:37 pm 2 comments

Here is the next thing for a misplaced clampdown.

Chewing gum. The next big things to be clamped down on by the Government.

Serious stuff. Seems it costs a fortune to clear up at 10p per deposit. Councils are funding this, some to over £40K pa, and want some subsidies to help them.

So, yet again, instead of clamping down on the offenders the plan is to get the manufacturers to fund this clearup or funding from a central source. That will mean that people who dispose of their gum properly will be funding a cleanup for those that don't. Oh, and this could be an offence we could handle the easy way by our pay as you go justice scheme. Of course being an offence against the council it is likely to have a fine of £1K so won't fit into it.

Unfortunately, I'm a pain when it comes to this. I see this sort of funding as me paying for the privilege of disposing of my gum by spitting it onto the street. A bit like the extra you pay for blank CDs because they are used for copying. I see it as a license to copy CDs and, will if this goes through, save time on wrapping my gum and searching out a bin I can just spit it on the ground.

Everyone is a winner. They get the funding they want we get to dispose of it recklessly.

posted by Bag @ 3:10 pm 0 comments

Round and round we go. Driving sex underground.

Just reading the articles or prostitution. First of all where we are going to take the driving licenses off the punters kerb crawling and then where they move on to allowing small brothels.

My first question is why do they feel they have to revisit this old chestnut? Things have been quite in the news lately with nobody being murdered. All it does is move the trade underground where it becomes dangerous for the women as punters must hide their identity from the man. The talk about allowing brothels is all a load of rubbish. Permission will need to be sought from the local council who will generally refuse it as they do some sex shops to force them to move to another area. Therefore the end result for most areas will be to drive the trade underground where the women can have less protection.

All this moralistic policy making is to make sure some of our people don't get upset about people selling their bodies. Well, I sell mine every day to earn a crust. Unfortunately, except for people pulling parts they shouldn't I spend all day talking and sitting on my bum. And, lets not forget because I started early, I had a paper round, that makes it Abuse of children. Some people sell their bodies to put nuts on wheels, some for manual labour, others for sex. They just do other things for the money. Not my taste but probably because I couldn't live from what my tired old body could make.

Jeez. I can even understand the abuse and child abuse part. Making something illegal ups the price and gangs can get involved and make some money. Making it legal means that the women don't need protection so can be open and that should control the number of children and those that are abused in the game.

Not much different with drugs, guns, dog fights etc. Illegal means underground market. As the prohibition proved.

A typical Government screw up. Based on their morals and the believe that making something illegal stops it. Will they ever learn?

posted by Bag @ 1:53 pm 0 comments

I should have bought a pirated version.

Just bought a copy of 'The Dukes of Hazzard' on DVD or as I called it 'Daisy Duke'. It was on sale which told me something I already suspected but Jessica Simpson in that bikini for the video caused me to err on the side of recklessness.

Anyway, put it in the DVD as the daughter wanted to watch it. First of all I had to navigate three screens to select UK English. Looks like the whole world was on and 'U' being at the end of the alphabet was a pain.

Then I got the compulsory adverts I could not skip. So ten minutes after the DVD went in I started to watch the film. My daughter complained about the time it took me to get it ready for her.

Then it was as crap as I suspected it would be. Every my daughter was not impressed.

I commented that next time I buy a crap film I'll get the pirated version. No cumbersome menus and the adverts stripped out. No feeling of dissatisfaction on paying for a booby. Plus, I support our local economy and keep the price of drugs, guns and women down. A bargain.

posted by Bag @ 11:30 pm 0 comments

How to win on crime the NuLabour way.

First of all you turn it into a business.

Seems that there is a proposal that certain crimes such as shoplifting, theft and criminal damage, for example no longer need to be tried in court. Only crimes that could lead to a jail sentence need be tried in courts. The other crimes will result in fines to be decided by prosecutors and the police. Read more here.

So this means that you pay your whack to the Government via your fines and you can go about your business. Pretty much the same as what we do with our taxes.

Taxes via legitimate business to Government.
Insurance, also taxed, paid by us to Government.
Taxes, via PAYE, paid by us to Government.
Taxes (In name only), via fines, paid by criminals to Government.

Result for Government.
Crime down. No point in counting pseudo legal crime.
Police time saved. Shoplifters will just be kicked out of shops instead of arrested.
Court time saved. For real crimes like wearing Anti Blair T-Shirts.
Revenue up. From the new income source.
Revenue up. From increased insurance taxes as insurance premiums go up to cover cost.
Revenue up. From increased Insurance company turnover.

Surely drugs must be next. Think of the income from drugs alone without the cost of jailing them. The Government must be salivating at the thought.

posted by Bag @ 9:24 am 0 comments

What great achievements we can make. In some areas.

Retrieving some space dust from a distant comet and returning it to earth. Is that not a great achievement? Read more about the Stardust mission here. What an advanced species we are to have engineered machinery and sent it on this multi billion mile voyage for a rendevous with a fast moving comet, collect some samples and return to earth. All over a period of seven years and without any maintenance once it was launched.

Then consider two things.

We are still blowing holes in each other all over the world for various reasons. Which kind of put a question on how advanced we are.

We still take risks with things we don't know about. Here we are bringing back material from the birth of our solar system. Material that could contain chemical building blocks that are a threat to our existence. Yet another question on our intelligence.

We really are like children. Playing with things we don't fully understand and taking chances in our eagerness to learn. All without a care in the world.

posted by Bag @ 4:03 pm 0 comments

Why are they treated differently anyway?

Reading this article on our Fuhrer removing the barriers to tapping MPs phones made me laugh. It seems the poor souls are not happy with being listened to by MI5. How sad.

Why are they treated differently to Joe Public anyway? After all, If they have nothing to hide..... etc.

Maybe this will also make them think that if these draconian laws will be effecting them they may take a bit more care what they vote for. It's your fault anyway you useless whining bunch.

I'm behind you on this one Tony. Jeez, that was tough to type.

posted by Bag @ 3:49 pm 0 comments

Revisiting our Iraqi Jailbreak. This time for a bit of truth.

Seems that our Government wasn't entirely truthful to us over the time the SAS guys were broken out of an Iraqi jail. Seems the Iraqis were a bit more pissed off with us than our Government let on. Read more here.

It also discusses our injured soldiers. The forgotten ones.

posted by Bag @ 9:53 pm 0 comments

A look to the future.

I was watching Spongebob Squarepants earlier, don't ask, and there was a session with a character who was down on his luck. Spongebob took pity on him and brought him into his house and ended up pampering him for months. I know it's a kid’s story but it got me thinking. At the same time I was thinking about the complaints made by child free couples about paying for children via taxation. A part of a previous article.

They got me thinking about the way we support certain schemes via a central purse and the way things appear to be going. That then got me looking at where we are going long term, with unfortunate results. I had an epiphany on several issues and felt like a rant.

One of those was about the long term future of the British people. The issue is that it appears it's all the 'wrong' people that are having kids. It's a class type issue. Our working families generally have a maximum of two kids but we have single mums on the social with several kids from different fathers. It's mainly the ones who need support who are having kids whilst the ones in the good jobs that are avoiding having kids. Unfortunately, the ones in jobs are the ones who have been interviewed and selected for those jobs based mainly on intelligence and ability. It's Darwinism in reverse.

In Darwin's theory natural evolution allows the strong to live while the weak perish. The weak perishing means they do not get to reproduce and weaken the race as a whole. Now along comes our social engineering and this allows the weak to reproduce and 'weakens' the entire race. Now I know this is eugenics and it has a very bad name but is it wrong?

In addition we have all the immigrants coming into the UK where they live among their own kind, don’t integrate and pick up benefits. They are also having kids who don’t conform to the new society they live in but instead still follow the path of their homeland. In some cases bringing traditions which were old before the industrial revolution. It’s a form of invasion.

We can even see this in nature now. If you want to see what is going on look at the introduction and invasion of the Grey Squirrel which has virtually annihilated the native Red Squirrel. Grey Squirrels are regarded as pests but the Red is protected as it is endangered. This by itself is a prime example of our society screwing up nature because we know better. Grey Squirrels were introduced by humans to the UK for several decades starting from approx. 1876. Once the Grey is established the Red Squirrel cannot compete and dies out. For more details read here.

We are now seeing a similar competition in humans. The competition is such that those with good jobs do not have the time or inclination to have children and as a replacement we have a new class in the UK. The child bearing class. Funded by the social and pushed to have a child every few years outside of what our society sees as a stable family life to maximize their income. Studies show children born in these environments tend to have poor educational ability and a tendency for antisocial behavior. I believe that we should no longer encourage those that cannot look after their offspring to have any. This would at the very least reduce the load on our funds. We need to help those that we can but not by providing them with so much encouragement to drop yet more unwanted kids on the world but by aiding those that look after their kids and ensure they get a good education. One way we could do this by not paying people based on how many kids they have but instead reduce tax liabilities and increase availability of aid for working families. Things like free meals and extended hours at schools to enable parents to have more flexible arrangements at work. I'm sure there are other options to encourage our society to grow. Regardless of our Child bearing class we are still running at -ve population growth. Not a good sign for the future.

So the fact is that the natives in the UK are in decline. Our population growth is -ve. How can this be so? Our statistics show an increase in population. This is due to immigration. Soon we will have reduced our own numbers so much that we will eventually be overtaken by immigrants and their offspring. An interesting dilemma. Here we are being forced to fund aid to places like Africa, who cannot sustain themselves without it and take in refugees with little or no education and keep them at a much higher standard than they could live at home. It looks like the US, EU and Oz will be in the same boat as us with this. Westerners are a dying breed due to our good natured attempts to help those less fortunate.

I hate to say it but Enoch Powell was a visionary. I think his solutions are unacceptable though. Surely we can come up with a better one.

In the meantime I'm being told I have to work longer to keep funding a growing bunch of social claimants. While I am being robbed, via taxes, by a Government which cannot look at anything beyond the short term and it's own feel good control policies. You can't comment on it as your as seen as a bigot by the PC crowd and, if our free country, cough, can even get jail time for having such a opinion in opposition to the Government.

Is this situation really sustainable? I no longer believe so. Can we fix it? Well we could by changing our social system and forcing the immigrants to blend in with our culture. Get rid of the PC crowd and introduce a new British society. One based on ability without a support system for those not willing to change. Will we do it? Nope, I believe it will continue until we have race wars when we will be forced to throw away our civilised veneer and we will enter a dark age on this planet. Who will win? Well, the Chinese and Indians have just under 3B people between them alone. The EU, US and Oz have about 1B. That leaves about 2B for the rest of the world. Most of whom don't like us either. So 5B against 1B. You do the maths.

posted by Bag @ 8:16 pm 0 comments

Why is this not front page news?

Found this via Chicken Yoghurt. Well spotted.

The MET internal investigation has found that the two officers followed correct procedures when they shot de Menezes in July. Read more here.

No big surprise at the conclusion but why this is not all over the news is.

posted by Bag @ 9:41 pm 0 comments

Blairs Policies seem to be working.

The dumbing down of our children is progressing satisfactorily.

It seems that the schools climbing the league tables are doing so because they are being steered away from 'complicated' GCSE academic subjects towards 'simpler' GNVQ vocational subjects. Read more here.

The sciences seem to be the biggest hit although curiously Maths and English do not get a mention. I would have thought Maths was an academic subject. Maybe it hasn't got much worse because it was crap already.

I contradicts what the Government said after the last exams, read here, but that seems to be a standard now. The spin put on by statistics can make black sound like white.

It seems that soon we will have few intakes into research and development roles and with natural attrition the number able to do these tasks will reduce. Coupled with the fact that we are all expected to work longer it will be a while before replacements are impossible to find. So it will be an option of take Johnny Foreigner with his education, much better than ours, or we offshore the R&D processes to more educated countries.

We are wasting entire generations of kids potentials in the cause of feelgood and chasing artificial statistics. Someone needs to pay for this atrocity.

posted by Bag @ 10:49 am 0 comments

Waste Management A Wasted Opportunity?

Now I may be an old fart but I remember when the council services seemed to run without too many problems. Rates were not at the level they are now by a long way and they included water rates in there as well. Now we have split them out and both have shot up in cost and, in the councils case, a much reduced service as well. The say council rates alone have gone up 120+% in a decade. Legalised robbery.

In the waste disposal service I remember when they went from the old dustbins to the new wheelie bins. The only real impact for most was that they refused to collect the bins from your house but instead forced us to move the new bins out the front where, of course, we then had rules about that as well. Such as bins went out on the day of collection and not the night before or you got fined. For a 7:30 pickup as it is in my street that rule was quickly ignored but I understand some have been fined for it but not in our area. For most people putting bins out is not a big problem but what if you are away overnight. This isn't too much of a problem for me because I usually make alternative arrangements but for some it is.

Then we moved on to recycling. We are into our third year this year and I personally think it is a good idea as I used to recycle before it was compulsory. When the council said they were doing it my heart sank. Only because Government can't do anything right. They trialed it in our area so we got it over two years ago. We now have two plastic boxes, with lids for newspaper and cardboard waste, plastic sacks for tins, bottles and general plastics and a smaller wheelie bin for garden waste. Also as it is sold on as 'high quality' waste they want us to remove the paper labels and wash the tins, bottles and general plastics, again, under penalty of a very hefty fine. Err. I don't think so. I hate washing up and I am not putting tins in my dishwasher. Luckily a lot of tins now come preprinted on the tin itself. But those that don't have the label on. Perhaps when I am on a warning and the next time I am caught I get a fine I'll look at alternatives. They pick up the main waste one week and the recycling the next. That means I store my waste for up to a fortnight. Not including holiday times which also causes delays. My bins and boxes are usually full at the end of a fortnight. Now all the real local recycling centres are closed so if I want to take my own I have to travel several miles to what is called 'Your Local Recycling Centre' which also has council closing times. So 07:00 or 21:00 is out. And another thing that causes problems is the list of what can be recycled keeps changing it has been changed twice since it started and I can't recycle some things that were OK in the pre-council scheme. I just ignore the leaflets now and stick them straight in the newspaper recycling. Is it not ironic that a recycling scheme generates so much paper which is compulsory reading at every home. I just don't have the inclination so I don't bother.

Here is the part that made me write this. On Tuesday, (I've been trying to post this article since then), I went outside into my back yard and discovered that there were cardboard boxes all over the place. It appears that the lid had popped off my plastic box for the cardboard recycling. Not a big surprise because it was well and truly packed and compressed because no recycling has been picked up this year at all. So the biggest waste time of the year went without a recycling pickup. And let's face it most of the stuff at Xmas is probably boxes and wrapping. I've utilised cardboard boxes that Xmas presents came in as recycling boxes. Unfortunately, they are now soaked and near collapse so I'm hoping they are picked up when they come round for recycling, for the first time this year, later this week. I phoned the council and they said that 'Normal service has been resumed.' Which I took to mean 'Sod Off. You can wait till it's your proper turn.'

Finally, since the recycling was brought in there seems to be a lot more waste floating around our street. The whole area looks dirtier. It's usually bit of paper, crisp bags, plastic bottles or small cardboard boxes. I think it's down to two things. When the collectors open a box to put it in the lorry if something pops out because it is under pressure or the wind catches it they just leave it and when we put these boxes out ourselves they sometimes pop open and some gets blown away. My front garden usually has a few of these items trapped in among the bushes. I've got to the stage now where I couldn't care less and I just remove them from the bushes and throw them back into the street. Saves me trekking to the back to put it in the correct receptacle. You can call me apathetic, I just can't be bothered. I'm happy to moan and stir things up but can't be bothered to get active about it.

My conclusion is that the council, being forced by the EU to start recycling, decided to make some money out of it and limit their work and make us all work for them. This forced them to limit their ability to sort the items and rely on us. Because we are too lazy and/or stupid to sort out different types of plastic they took the easy route and chose the most profitable that could easily be sorted. This scheme could be so much more and if properly implemented then people, like me who put myself out on my own, would buy into it.

Government in action. More legislation, more cost and less service and satisfaction. A statement of the time.

posted by Bag @ 4:41 pm 0 comments

That Cumbersome Justice Process.

Blair told a summit of social workers at No 10 that the Government's "respect action plan" would bypass cumbersome "judge and jury" court processes and introduce more summary justice. They must lap that up. One is on the spot fines and the other is eviction from your home.
This means you will be penalised by all the existing petty Hitlers out there, plus lots more new ones, and subjected to punishment, I won't call it justice, without facing a trial or review.

In reality that means that you are expected to pay your fine or be evicted then appeal against the conviction if you think it is wrong at your cost.

I can't wait for the first case where someone doesn't pay and is taken to court. Will they then examine the case or just the fact a payment has not been made? Probably a payment not being made. OK, let's wait for the first person to sue. Hope I'm on the jury. If they have one for these cases. The real milestone will be the first one to retaliate. That should cause a rethink.

posted by Bag @ 12:14 pm 0 comments

The Devil is in the Details.

Ruth Kelly is having some problems over the last few days regarding people on the Sex Offenders Register working in schools. Read more here.

For what it's worth I must admit I find it funny but the situation is not.

Here we have a list which is populated with all the convicted sex offenders in the UK and also those suspected of sex offences but not charged. Because of this the Government has compiled a, slightly, smaller list of those who should not have jobs with children. As usual they have cocked it up. Mainly do to putting unconvicted people on the main register who they know presents no risk to children.

It used to be convicted people only, then after Soham, all suspected were also put on the register in a knee jerk reaction to appease the people.

This caused many travesties as, for example, people have been added to this list for taking pictures of their children naked in the bath. Pictures that, in my youth, my mother displayed to my girlfriends. Is she a pedophile? She is, under these ridiculous laws. If you are a young man experimenting with sex with a young girl of the same age. On you go as well. So, we have many people on the Sex Register who, even the Government knows, are not a danger to children. Unfortunates caught in the crossfire.

Now if I was on there and refused a job without being convicted I would sue for loss of livelihood in the European Court if necessary. I suspect that the dozen or so the fuss is about fall into the unconvicted category and the Government doesn't want to risk any controversy.

The Sex Offenders Register should be made up of all convicted Sex Offenders and any not convicted should be removed from it, tried in a court and if found guilty put back on the register. All those on this register should not ever be given a job with anyone at risk. All those suspected of sex crimes should be suspended on full pay and face a quick trial. Let's face it the evidence must be available at this point.

posted by Bag @ 8:55 am 2 comments

Blogger issues.

What is going on. I've been trying to post a piece on our Council Waste management all day and it keeps getting rejected but I can post other things. When it fails it says 'Blog not found'. It's driving me loopy and, to be honest, there is not far to go.

I'll try again tomorrow.

posted by Bag @ 5:49 pm 0 comments

Self Defence in the law means Home Defence only.

I was reading about this guy losing an appeal against the removal of his shotgun license which leads to the fact you can't do anything to defend yourself nowadays without running foul of the law. The same laws that don't seem to protect you. To be honest this guy was stupid. He didn't look at our criminal class and modify his behaviour by lying. If he had said he had learnt his lesson rather than being truthful and saying he would do it again he may have got away with it.

Being in your house however seems to allow a greater latitude for self defence. So the best thing to do is barricade yourself in your house. If someone breaks in blow them away with the home made shotgun they came in with. Wink, wink. Fingerprints will need to be added later.

That got me thinking about the way our rights to self defence are being eroded whilst at the same time society seems to be getting more aggressive. The police can't help you. They can scrape up the remains and then chase down the offenders most of the time but that does not stop bad things happening to you.

Then, of course, there is the oppressive society we are now in which mean that you have a lot more risk of your own Government giving you lead injections either deliberately or accidentally. All this to protect you from an increased risk of a terrorist attack.

All in all, a definite increase to the risk of you getting killed or injured and an insignificant risk of a terrorist doing either of those things to you.

Bring on the revolution.

posted by Bag @ 3:44 pm 0 comments

Our Leader using his strength.

As part of my once a decade thinking process I had a think about our beloved leader. Our PM Tony Blair.

I came to the conclusion that the problem is a lot simpler than I originally thought. I thought he was working to a master plan for a Blairite Society where people followed simple rules and it was all very middle ground and with Christian values with everything smooth running with any extreme behaviours knocked out of us by force.

Then watching him screw up the EU Presidency and the start of a new devastation of our rights and freedoms I suddenly realised what it was.

Blair is actually just a salesman with a similar hypnotic technique to Rasputin, Charles Manson and Hitler. He is a Snake Oil Salesman out to make a name for himself.

He has sold himself to all the gullible people out there as a Leader to be followed and listened to. And a lot have. He was aided by the fact we are in a time where our politicians are seem as low life and his dim star shone brighter for that.

His policies seemed to be ill conceived and naive. I now think that is because he makes it up as he goes along based on what he sees as the best way to go at the time or based on making some sort of name for himself. That is why he got involved in Iraq. Why he failed to do anything with the EU. Why we have the Torture scandal. Why he keeps people close to him and protects them.

When he deals with foreigners, he is under great pressure. Johnny Foreigner has no time to be sold anything and instead he had to use his political skills which are sadly lacking as we have seen.

That is also why we have all the new style KGB thugs out there removing dissent and restricting protests. Like the North Korean leader nothing must show he is not loved in his own country. It does not look good when you are selling snake oil to have your disgruntled customers in the background making themselves heard.

Unfortunately, people become harder to hypnotise and not hearing about dissent doesn't make you happier. Looks like our salesman snake oil is not selling as well as it did. Even our MPs are starting to come out of the trance and are kicking off. About time too.

posted by Bag @ 12:47 pm 0 comments

Cool. Real Life TV.

Well, not really cool but ice cold. It is going to take some special people to sit all day and watch this sort of real life TV. People like pedophiles. Some one who is going to get something out of it.

This scheme proposed by Shoreditch looks good on paper but what real benefit will it be. There will undoubtedly be many takers because of the other benefits but are Shoreditch merely going to save money by removing the watchers and entrusting this to civilians. If it was in my area then I would certainly not be looking at it.

It sounds even more boring than a Channel 4 reality TV program. I've got better things to do with my life like train spotting, err, gardening, well, other things I like anyway. I can't think of anything more boring than watching real life street scenes. Although, I also get turned off by Big Brother, Parliament TV and others of the same ilk. They seem to be very popular. Maybe I'm in the minority on this one. It might be a big hit, Shoreditch save some salaries, emergency services get swamped by two hundred callers because they see someone spitting on the streets.

Can't wait till we get cameras in my street. Not!

posted by Bag @ 12:07 pm 0 comments

An enhanced M6. This will be interesting.

Looks like there the powers that be are considering either, a new toll road to run parallel to the M6 or, widening the M6. Read more here. What is the point of having another road running exactly parallel with an existing one as the map shows? Plus it will take up a large amount of land to put a brand new one on. Surely much more expensive than an expansion.

Could we finally be getting something for all the road tax we pay? A better M6 would certainly be a benefit for the North of England.

Unfortunately, I suspect we will see another Toll road. Another way to suck yet more money from the hapless motorist.

But fingers crossed.

posted by Bag @ 11:10 am 0 comments

Media Bias.

One complaint I heard about blogs was that the writer has a bias before he writes an article. He then selects his stories to support his bias and then writes to emphasize that bias.

Wow! What an insightful view. My comment on that was that newspapers have almost as much of a personal bias as the blogs. Each newspaper seems to have at it's core a view of the world and it selects stories to reflect that view. Some of them are so biased it is clear what their views are and others a bit more subtle. Plus, people actually believe things in newspapers, including the implications, are indisputably correct.

Here is one I spotted in the Daily Mail about a kid having a seizure playing a computer game. The article told a story with a subtle smack against violent computer games but at the same time missed the main story. The implication from the story was that it was only a violent computer game that caused his seizure. Because, he had been to discos and played games before but not had a seizure. Bit like saying it was my go fast stripes that caused the car crash because I had driven for years before I had them put on without a crash. The best bit was the game was for 15 or over, at which age the risk of seizures is reduced, and the parents were teachers. The same people teaching our kids, poorly, I may add. It seems they made a decision to allow him to play the game and when it went wrong now want to blame someone else. Instead of accepting responsibility they, like everyone else, want someone else to be at fault. Definitely, a sign of our times. Not my fault. Perhaps if the story had emphasised that others may be more careful of the games their kids have.

In one way they guy saying blogs have a bias was right. Some blog writers have a view on the world that verges on 'hate' and, even with some of our newspapers, the writings would never make it into print. Because of this blogs are taken less seriously than mainstream media. It's not to say there is not a place for blogs as the 'torture memos' show. However, when blogs start getting reported as sources in the mainstream media we will soon see the blog writers getting sued. To be treated seriously comes at a price. I don't want that, do you?

posted by Bag @ 10:06 am 0 comments

A gesture drowning in hate.

We are talking about spitting on a football field by the way.

You know, where your mouth gets full of saliva because you are, well running around, and you just need to spit it out. OK, I'll concede it is not nice to spit it at someone, but does it show you are drowning in hate? Even if you do spit it at someone it is more contempt than hate but hate is such an emotive word.

Anyway, this guy is writing to the Professional Footballers Association to discourage the players from spitting. I can see it now. The ref will have to stop the game because someone needs to spit. Red cards and fines if you spit on the field and, God forbid, if you spit at someone.

Jeez, won't be long before scratching your balls is a criminal offence.

posted by Bag @ 4:58 pm 0 comments

Taking responsibility for your Actions.

A valid statement.

If I chose to do anything at all at some point I may have to justify my decision with the potential of a penalty to be paid by me.

I chose to speed down a road. I chose to travel within the speed limit but in adverse conditions. I shoot someone with a gun. I wear a T-Shirt with a political slogan on.

We try an instill this into our Children and, hopefully, help them build up the moral character to make them better people.

But when you are a Politician all this responsibility seems to disappear. You can lie to get your favourite cause progressed. Lie to get rid of recreational guns. Lie to go to War. Lie to cover up your actions. All without any chance of a repercussion.

I believe there is a case to be made. I believe that a crime has been committed. I always believed that Papa Roach's song 'Getting away with murder' was aimed at Bush and, in my mind, Bliar.

So, good luck to those saying we should impeach Bliar like General Sir Michael Rose. If you agree that a crime needs to be punished, kind of put my cards on the table there, and want to add your name to a petition then go to impeachblair.org.

posted by Bag @ 4:26 pm 0 comments

One of my crimes.

The massacre of the English language. One of my favourites, the misuse of apostrophes appears to be nominated as an Icon of England.

I also write as I speak so my writings tend to ramble and drift off the point. Plus I'm looking for feedback so I can go off at a tangent so I don't tend to put everything down while I blog. I'm much better at writing reports. Honest.

posted by Bag @ 4:08 pm 0 comments

Prediction of Retail Recovery in 2006.

BDO Stoy Hayward are saying that 'consumer confidence and spending will recover, aided by cooling oil prices and a stabilising housing market'. Sounds good for the UK as a whole. Read more here. This is something they have been saying before.

Funny thought that I have decided that this year will be my frugal year. I'm going to be careful what I spend, clear off my credit cards and get some money saved up. I'll probably not even have a major holiday this year either. I'll do something different for a change. I'm going to start thinking about that now.

Bottom line though is that with the publics desire to shed debt, as I just said I was going to, coupled with the fact everyone is paying more and more either directly or indirectly to the Government I don't see a recovery in 2006. Never mind in the 2nd Quarter as predicted by BDO Stoy Hayward. But we will see.

posted by Bag @ 12:50 pm 0 comments

'Incidents of this nature are extremely rare.'

'Incidents of this nature are extremely rare.' says Detective Inspector Adam Price of the Hampshire Constabulary while discussing the shooting of a doorman in what looks like a murder attempt. Read more here.

They say that to calm and allay our fears and to play down how much gun crime has spiraled out of control since the 1997 gun ban to remove gun crime from our streets.

Interestingly enough, the only time it was not used after someone was shot was after the very rare event of a copper being shot. Must have been a coincidence.

posted by Bag @ 7:31 pm 0 comments

Subsidising others with Children. Part of our policies.

I was reading this article about child free couples objecting to paying for couples with children with Government subsidies. Now they do have a point. However, you can have the same issues with providing cycle lanes, dog waste bins, ramblers rights of way, disabled access to name a few. Where do you draw the line? The article mentions that there is now a movement towards rebelling against this process which is also felt in the workplace where having children seems to be a ticket for days off and holiday date favouritism.

Could you image the chaos it would create if they did manage to get a policy change at Government level? Imagine it, no payments from the child free to those with children. Our whole social system would collapse. How would all the single mums survive? Plus, it would open the doors to people who then say 'I don't use the library. Why should I pay for it?' Substitute your own favourite here.

They may make changes in the workplace, and probably will, it's all part of the reason working mums find it so difficult to get decent employment. They always come in with unwritten requirements. However, they will never get any Government to change their policies primarily as they seem to be trying to reverse the trend of population decline in the UK by encouraging children. Good luck to them. Although the people taking up these subsidies will, in effect, be getting paid to have children via a Government scheme. These are the same mum's who are leaving school with few, if any, qualifications. So no real jobs only a Government breeding programme. Do we really want to encourage this?

posted by Bag @ 5:30 pm 0 comments

Had some time to spare today.

Stayed in looking after the baby today so had plenty of time to have a look around at other blogs. As you can probably see. Found a few interesting things then I came across these simple tests at Blogthings via a link on Devils Kitchen so having some spare time I had a go at a few.

Here are the results, in no particular order just roughly grouped. Some are OK and show what a nice chap I am but some show what an plonker I am. You win some and you lose some. Some of them have comments added to the results page as well.

My Quick and Dirty IQ.
My World View.
My Religious Philosophy.
How I Live my Life.
My one Question Personality Test.
My Temperament.
My Blogging Style.
How I am seen by others.
What Degree I should be studying.
What Type of Brain am I?
How much I can be bought for. (Remember currently 1$=£0.56 so it's worse than it looks)
How Machiavellian am I?
Luck and Power.
My Observation Skills.
What is my Hidden Talent?
How Weird am I?
How Scary am I?
How Boyish am I?
My Love Element.
What Sort of Ex am I?
What my Underwear says about me.
What my Sleeping Position says about me.
8th grade Science Test. (I think 8th grade is 1st year Secondary in the UK)
US citizenship test. (Good News for any Americans I know)
How I compare with the Average American.

posted by Bag @ 9:40 pm 0 comments

Tell me again about this link to Terrorists.

If, as I am lead to believe, I am supporting terrorists and pedophiles when I purchase pirate DVDs why can't I buy guns or a women from the guy up the street copying DVDs?

What am I doing wrong? Should, instead of looking at what he has on his DVD lists, I should be asking where are your Glocks and AK47s. Or is the Young Ones a euphemism for a twelve year old girl? If so these Russian women are cheaper than I thought. Should I have two in case one has a headache?

Is there really a link to Terrorists or Slavery from piracy which I don't believe for an instant? It is more likely propaganda from the music and video industry to try and make us feel guilty because we sure don't have any guilt about paying for pirated material.

Regardless like most of these propaganda exercises. Joe Public does not believe it. Pity really because when there is a valid case to be made we are so used to the bull that we miss it.

Just to test though I'll ask the guy from next door what 9mm's he can get when he pops down to the computer fair to get his DVDs next.

posted by Bag @ 8:48 pm 0 comments

Revisiting 911.

Just come across a website on my trawl dealing exclusively with 911 called www.911wasalie.com. I have not looked at 911 sites for a while so I was a bit surprised that there was some new stuff up on there.

I particular there is now a theory that the second plane was a drone with a missile and it was laser guided on to the tower. Another conspiracy theory. However, looking at the facts supplied seem to indicate there is some questions that need to be asked.

Now four years later we know enough about our lying Government's to at least consider some of these as facts.

Go. Look. Make up your own mind.

posted by Bag @ 5:55 pm 0 comments

'The US Military's policy is to preserve life'. Honest!

Go and read this article and this one about hunger strikers at Gitmo and the news speak play on words and propaganda.

I like this bloggers sense of humour and his blog is well worth a visit. I've added him to the sidebar as well.

'... our policy is to preserve life' - Col. Jeremy Martin (US Military).

And we do it by ensuring that they don't hurt themselves. We lock them up for years and make sure they don't trip on anything. We give them medical attention after every, cough, accidental knock. We feed them a balanced diet based on their nutritional requirements. We keep them clean via this waterboarding technique we have perfected and we keep them away from the sun to reduce the risk of skin cancer. We keep them away from family to reduce stressful arguments about who does the washing up and things. In fact we do many, many more things I don't have the time to mention that mean they are safer here than in Iraq where they would likely have died by now. We feel we are doing them a favour and they will look upon us as, well, big brothers as they live long lives. We are sure we will be getting some sort of Red Cross award soon.

posted by Bag @ 12:01 pm 0 comments

At last. Compensation to a victim. But, wait...

I came across this article where a victim of a crime was being repaid by selling the proceeds of the criminal, in this case an Elvis collection was being sold off to repay the victim.

Great! About time this happened. Then I actual read it a little and then thought 'Typical!'. It seems that the criminal stole from a council car parking scheme and the money is to repay that. Read more here.

Why is it that if you are Government you can get this sort of response? Drug dealers get their assets confiscated, tax avoiders get their assets confiscated, council swindlers get their assets confiscated but when the victim is Joe Public and not a Government body they get virtually nothing back. Plus to make matters worse they have to give up their time to go to court and don't get fully compensated for that. Unless they are on the dole of course. Government people go on the our time. Joe Public get screwed all the time.

In this case if you dig down a little and think about it, the tax payers have bought this property with their own money and are being charged to use it. An issue where I currently live that pisses people off. It is one of the things that I hate. You buy it via a central resource, the council, and then are charged to use it by them as an income for them to fund other activities. In which case, IMO, one thief stole it from someone who gained it immorally. Interesting concept, who is the real bad guy? Something for another time.

Is it not about time that if criminal damage, theft, whatever is done to us, the public, and the perpetrator has goods or funds we get compensation to the full level instead of being a victim twice? How many times do you read of thousands of pounds of damage and a paltry £250 compensation if any? That is partly why insurance is so high and the right crime, not against a Government body, does pay.

posted by Bag @ 11:25 am 0 comments

This should make an interesting agenda item.

Seems a member of the Green party has said the world population size is a 'Green priority'. Read more here. What sort of policy is that? How can you do anything that will change the way we are going?

Well, good luck with that policy guys. It'll be unlikely you will ever impact on British Politics if you run with policies like this which are meaningless. Even the backlash against NuLabour (Tories in disguise) and the NuConservatives (NuLabour in disguise) will bring you few votes. The BNP are more likely to be the winners of the disenchanted. At least this has more chance of making changes, even if they are the wrong ones.

In the meantime we can imagine that you have taken the helm of the UK with this policy. What will the priorities be?

Bearing in mind the UK population is increasing through immigration and not through organic growth anyway. So stopping immigration would cause a -ve growth in the UK. Interestingly we may need to leave the EU for this. Or do we think we would be able to influence the EU from within? Decisions, decisions.

Anyway, policies; Reverse population growth. Reduce use of resources. Discourage travel. Move towards a more natural lifestyle. By the way. this has to be worldwide.

- Stop immigration.
- Compulsory abortions? Hopefully, happily married couples will be allowed to have kids. But, wait a minute. Are not most Greens Anti, well everything, but in particular abortion? OK, we will scrap that one. Let's just leave as it is.
- Free Contraceptives to everyone, including the under 16s. Sounds OK. I can't think that will make a big difference while we still house teenagers who have kids as a priority but it's a start.
- Stop providing aid, medicines etc. to other countries that do not have a -ve population growth. Let them die through starvation and disease.
- Manufacture weapons. Sell them at cost to anyone foreign that wants to buy them. The more punch the better.
- Introduce restrictions on development and expansion. No more building houses, roads, anything at all. They use up valuable resources.
- Put traffic lights on every corner. Set to long Reds. All speed limits set to 20mph. All roads restricted to single lanes, including motorways.
- Close all the hospitals. Issue everyone with a book on how to make your own cures and the spells necessary to cure those not available via natural cures.
- Bring back the Death Penalty for murder, child rape. Remove manslaughter from the books. Any death caused by a third party is murder, even in a car accident. Corporate manslaughter as well. Hell, forget that. Any criminal offence at all rates the death penalty.
- Make dissent to Government policy a criminal offence. That should help push the abortion one through as well. (I think this is one of NuLabour's aims)
- Make it compulsory for everyone to live within five miles of their working place.
- Close all airports except Aberdeen.
- Make suicide legal with a tax rebate to the families for all those that do so.
- Supply everyone with a gun at cost. Make 9mm a standard so ammunition is easily obtained.
This may sound a bit controversial but look at the advantages.
Whoever they kill is helping reduce the population and then they get executed as well. Soon there will be no bad guys at all.

Or let's go the full hog, let's start WWIII. Ensure we sell the Iranians, Syrians, hell everybody some nukes. Then attack them because 'The world is a dangerous place'. That should do it.

I'm bored now.

My point was : What sort of policy is this and what can realistically be done? Who in their right mind it going to stop progress and stagnate as a species? Do we really see us moving back to rural communities and all having a couple of chickens and a horse and goat each. Life expectancy back at 30 and our Green friends being squires of us all. Not me, that is for sure. If working with computers was not an option I'm so useless I would have to be a male prostitute. How could I live on £10 a month? Oops. Prostitution is illegal. I'm dead.

posted by Bag @ 2:38 pm 0 comments

DNA Matching. Not as reliable as we are led to believe.

Following on from my DNA DB article I went exploring and found some interesting things about DNA.

As an aside, the latest news was regarding the percentages of black people on the database. Read more here. But, is it surprising? The way the data is collected means that while blacks commit more crimes and are arrested there are going to be more on the database. Plus, because there is proportionally less of them in the UK, the percentage will be higher so it didn't come as big a surprise as the news seems to make it. Although, nearly half, 39% was more than I was expecting.

Back to the topic. I don't know about you but I originally believed that DNA was unique and that your DNA was never going to be found in another person.

Then I discovered it was unique in 1 in a hundred billion. That is 1:100,000,000,000. Err. How did they work that figure out? Usually through reverse engineering. They take 10,000 samples and get one duplicate or something and extrapolate it that way. If so how can they talk unique? This could mean that there is more than one of you with the same DNA. I know the current population is about six billion but statistically that could mean that there is someone with your DNA. It's only 0.06 but then the chance of winning the lottery is less than that and people win most weeks. OK then, DNA should only be used as an add on to existing evidence. It's still a reasonably good pointer but with no confession you must have some other evidence to support the crime. Unfortunately, that is not the case but it is assumed that statistically they are unlikely to pull off the street a match so they say let's not talk about false matches and still talk unique in court. What about Justice?

To make things worse it now starts to become clear that DNA and the DNA profiles we store on our databases are not the same and the chances of duplicates in the simpler DNA profiles is down to 1 in two hundred and forty thousand that is 1:240,000. A significant difference. Read more about profiling here. This guy has an axe to grind but his data seems to hold up.

That means in the UK with 60Million population there are approx 250 people with your DNA profile. In the world with 6Billion that makes it 25000. How is that conclusive proof with no other evidence?

Why do we still talk unique in court when it clearly isn't? Why is the Government so intent to build up it's DNA DB? I suppose if everyone is on it then when a crime is committed they can arrest all the matching profiles, about 250, release the ones with a clear alibi and then interrogate them, with or without waterboarding and narrow it down. Should save a lot of that pesky investigatory work and evidence finding. That seems to be the only reason I can come up with. How about justice then? His DNA matches. Guilty! And a nice quick court case.

posted by Bag @ 12:53 pm 0 comments

Secrets are just given away.

These must rank as two of the biggest cock ups ever.

On the one hand we have Iran struggling for years to perfect nuclear weapons and on the other we have the CIA giving them information it would take years and a lot of money to develop themselves.

In the same article we have a CIA agent exposing almost every spy in Iran.

Read more about these here.

Why is it called Central Intelligence when not a hint of intelligence is detected left, right or centre?

posted by Bag @ 10:03 pm 0 comments

What is going on?

Now over the last few weeks we have had two, seemingly, unconnected abductions of children from their homes. The first a six year old and the latest is a three, yes, three year old girl who was abducted and raped. Read more here and here. Now I may be naive but what sort of satisfaction can these perverts get from this? (No answers expected please) The mere fact they were taken from their own houses show this was not just a chance attack. Either these people were targeted for some other reason or they must be the unluckiest people on earth.

The good news is they go the b4$^4&ds in the latest attack. The bad news is the first lot are still free. Now the police are saying these cases are extremely rare. Maybe in the past but that seems to have changed.

The justice system better not let this lot slip down the crack of psychological problems and they better be locked away for a very long time. A mental hospital, one of the old styles, on a life sentence would do nicely.

posted by Bag @ 10:00 pm 0 comments

The UK is a world leader again.

Pity it is not in something good. Read this article on our DNA DB growth.

It seems we have more and more of our citizens under surveillance than anyone else and it is getting worse.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The old Soviet Empire did not have the technology to efficiently oppress their people. We have and, boy, are we finding out what a difference it makes.

I'll feel a lot safer when I have to swipe my ID card to get out the door and then at every lamp post I pass until I get in the car and swipe in where I can drive, being tracked all the way, to my destination before I start to swipe in again. Nothing will go wrong then. I trust my Government. Repeat. Nothing will go wrong. I trust my Government. Wait a minute.... No I don't.

Soon the only people we will fear is our own Government and it's for your own good mentality. I'm getting a bit twitchy now.

'Last century over 170 million people were murdered by their own governments, and your government doesn't want you to have a gun. Doesn't that bother you just a little?' Political Quote from here. Don't know where they got 170M from because it sounds low to me when you consider everything that happened then.

posted by Bag @ 4:08 pm 0 comments

Obsessive Secrecy is still the norm.

Just come across this article on the 10 oldest secrets which were made secret by order for 100 years.

Just running down the list you would expect to come across something interesting but not one was of any real interest whatsoever. It seems that even a hundred years ago nobody in Government circles wanted any of their decisions to be open to scrutiny. Thinks don't seem to change quickly in the Civil Service. They are so far behind they wanted to vote by post to bring us into the 21st Century now we have phones, Internet, FAXs etc.

Even after the FOI Act it's not all that much different now. The Government is complaining that the Act is being used frivolously and not in the manner it was intended. Mmmm. How sad. Now of course they are looking at setting fees to minimise frivolous enquiries. Oh! and there is a ten year backlog now for appeals so don't hold your breath unless it is an easy one.

My view is that every Government file, EMail, report or whatever should be automatically put in public view. Every EMail, letter or meeting with anyone in the DoH, Treasury, DWP or anything outside the MoD should be available and most of the MoD stuff which does not compromise a SIS asset or provide enemies with tactical or strategic information that could be used against us and by that I mean details on routes for nuclear weapons or plans for securing the convoys. Personal databases such as your tax records and NHS records should also be excluded. Everything else should be on www.archive.gov.uk in a searchable database and available for all to access. Items marked as excluded should be reviewed by an independent committee with input from the excluder and an review date of not longer than five years put on it.

posted by Bag @ 3:29 pm 0 comments

Stating the bleeding obvious. Again!

Yet again we have a think tank which comes out with the bleeding obvious as a conclusion for many, many expensive hours of, err, thinking. how do these people get these jobs? I should set up a think tank myself, how do I go about getting Government funding?

Anyway, now we have a statement that says that the PC culture we have is damaging society. They then go on to give two examples where the PC culture has harmed society. There was even a comment that the comments made here were 'inflammatory'. You have got to laugh.

Nowhere did I find it mentioned that the common person such as myself now sees real discrimination trivialised by all this PC thinking and when we eventually snap back the other way the gains made in real discrimination will be lost in the attempt to return to common sense.

But, who cares, I'm in the minority anyway being working, white, male and heterosexual.

posted by Bag @ 4:49 pm 0 comments

Terror, Death and Destruction have always been cheap.

I was reading this article about the actual cost of the terror attacks on the 7th July. In a way it is not too surprising. Acts of terror, death and destruction have been performed for centuries by the poor and oppressed against oppressive Governments. It is interesting primarily as it shows that all our work to combat it has mainly impacted us, the law abiding.

We seem to think that everything needs funding like drugs and so we monitor bank accounts and the positions of all our citizens in expensive job creating databases. But, does that stop our suicide bombers who only need a couple of hundred pounds and doesn't really care who knows where he was for the preceding five years? Of course not. He can get weapons easier than you or I can get access to drugs, copied DVDs or cheap fags, depending on your preferences, and like our precious leaders they also believe they are doing it for our own good. And, as our politicians prove, nothing can stop changes for our own good.

Our liberties are going down the pan as fast as our leaders can pull the handle and boy, are they experts are sewage extraction. Yet when it comes down to it you can clearly see that none of the processes or procedures put in place will stop those determined to do their evil deeds. They barely even slow them down. Again, a bit like politicians except these guys are willing to die for their convictions. Our politicians, on the other hand, are willing for as many as us to die for their convictions as it takes.

Note to Politicians : Stop interfering in people lives, here and abroad, and do what you are supposed to be doing. Making our society better, stronger and safer by leaving people alone if they are not doing anything to anyone else, looking after the weak at home before we go getting PR abroad and getting rid of petty bureaucracy for starters.

Note to Terrorists : We don't like this any more than you. Protests need to be heard at Downing Street, The Commons or selected Politician's houses, you know who they are, as anywhere else they will be ignored.

posted by Bag @ 4:48 pm 0 comments

Things will get more interesting in this area soon.

Seems that some GM Police officers are suing the force for a botched raid that resulted in an officers death. Read more here.

I envisage that it won't be long before they insist on so many things before they go into action that things like this become more commonplace. It is where a police force waited for hours while a gunman killed the victims until they felt it was 'safe'.

I can see it now.

Hostage in House : Help us. He is contesting his CSA payments.
SO19 Officer : Our 20 guys armed with H&K MP5's can't go in because the hostage taker has a plastic fork and our H&S process doesn't deal with plastic forks. We are looking to see if it can be treated as a plastic knife or a metal fork. A risk analysis is being scheduled as we speak.
Hostage in House : I'll see if I can get the fork off him.
SO19 Officer : We won't have any vigilante action on my watch. I'll get an ASBO on you for threatening behavior. Leave it to the professionals.
Two weeks later.
SO19 Officer : Guys time to go in. The analysts think the hostage taker has starved to death. Let's storm the building and free the hostages.
Building stormed. Hostage taker, barely alive, gets shot in head five times. Hostages have starved to death.
SO19 Officer : There was nothing else we could have done. We followed the book. Let's go to the pub. The world is a much safer place that hostage taker has died.

It may sound far fetched now but wait till the reports come out. All except the 7th July one of course.

posted by Bag @ 12:17 pm 0 comments

Oh! This will work.

Reading this new proposal about the social services KGB which we call the CSA.

It seems that as an urgent review because the CSA is so inefficient and not performing they now want to tag fathers that don't pay. That, I am sure, will make the CSA so much more efficient and, unsurprisingly enough, will probably result in an increase in CSA staff to administer.

Additionally, it will make criminals of people who have committed no crime. Unlike real criminals who don't get any punishment.

Couple this with the driving license confiscation and we are punishing fathers who don't make their CSA payments worse than we do with criminals. I don't fit in this category any more but if I did I think I would be rethinking my strategy for life in this country. You clearly can't get on with a life whilst you are an absent parent in this country. From what I can gather the US is even worse.

Who is it that thinks up these ideas? Why do we find so many who's ideas are listened to have no common sense?

I don't know what the real answer is I'm just certain that we have not found it and the proposals we are seeing show that the politicians don't know either and are just floundering around.

posted by Bag @ 11:16 am 0 comments