It must be that time of year everybody can't be bothered.
Everywhere I go it seems to be people just can't be bothered.
Tom Paine and Dr Crippen have decided to take a temporary break. Others have just stopped blogging or are blogging sporadically and output in general seems to have dropped. There are exceptions of course, DK, Burning Our Money, James, etc.
It also looks like everyone just seems to be shrugging their shoulder at what a year ago would have resulted in many column inches. I class myself in that category as well. It seems we are all waiting for a change. Something that gives us a bit of hope that things will change. Personally I think it's the weather I'm all hot and bothered as I type this.
Fingers crossed that something comes along and ignites the world of politics. I've my fingers crossed that it's some atrocity that takes out a lot of politicians but sadly I've hoped for that for a while and God has let me down before.
Personally I'm a bit fed up myself. I've got a million and one other things to do at the moment and other things have taken priority. I really should be looking for a new job. Circumstances are changing at home in many ways and I'm ripe for a change myself. I've slacked off a bit on the blog lately but will have a bit more time over the next three weeks to reconsider what I want to do.
In the meantime I'll try and find a few things to rant about while I write the occasional whinge in the local rag and try and sort out what I want to do with myself. One thing is certain it will involve whinging about something so I'll keep the blog going till it's overtaken by events or I have a stroke or something.
Where in the world can we go to?
The UK is going downhill rapidly, the US is doing the same, and Oz seems to be following in their footsteps. Read
here about the Ozzies screwing up this guys life and then just ignoring it. Exactly the same as their other allies in the war of stupidity.
Of course the Ozzies like us have banned the population having weapons. So there is nothing that they have any fear of. The US is working towards it.
It seems if you want to escape for a total bunch of morons as leaders then we need to actually move off planet. Can't actually think of anywhere else to go.
This is so farcical.
I was reading this about Farc who kidnapped eleven politicians and 'accidentally' executed them. It seems that they came across another rebel group, thought they were government troops sent to rescue the hostages so killed them rather than to have them escape. It like an episode of Keystone terrorists.
Of course Farc are performing an investigation. The results are not known yet but I feel that it's unlikely that any of the people who made this mistake will face justice. Read the full story
here.
This sounds very much like what could happen in the UK. Isn't it funny how these groups are becoming more legitimate in their actions.
Coincidence or what?
Remember the
fuss that the US is making about the BAESystems deal with Saudi. That deal is the biggest one done by the UK. Now it appears that the US is planning to make another deal. Read
here.
That BAESystems scandal must have seemed like manna from heaven for these guys. It came at just the right time. I wonder if the investigation will be dropped after the contract is signed.
I hope the US is better at hiding these things though. Hate to have to go through this again.
This says it all.
This morning my dad gave me a clipping from a paper. I've spent all day, on and off, looking for the online version. I don't even know what paper it was.
Anyway it is titled Embassy raps Putin hypocrisy. Basically it is continuing along the lines of criticising the Russian government for refusing to hand over Lugovoi. As you are probably aware the Russians are effectively offering to try him in Russia but we are refusing.
It full of the usual stuff but right at the bottom there is a statement that says it all 'The Russian side has more grounds to doubt the objectivity of the British justice system'
I comes to something when the Russians claim the moral high ground in matters of justice.
What has happened to us?
James blog is one today.
Nourishing Obscurity is one today.
Strangely he has disabled comments so I thought I would make mine here.
Happy birthday James.
Sometimes sacrifices have to be made.
In the war against terrorism there are some times things that you can do as an individual that doesn't deprive you of your freedom. Unlike all the governments actions.
This demo is an example of what we as individuals can do. I'm going to do my bit. Will you? Especially the women.
Stolen shamelessly, yet again, from
Theo Spark.
Crime reaches the elite.
Couldn't have happened to a more deserving chap. An MP gets injured when his car is stolen. Read
here.
Don't know the guy but as one of the elite that allows this thing to go unchecked in our society perhaps now he will take steps to rectify it.
lol
Depriving smokers makes them irritable.
This poor guy has been shot for trying to stop some guys smoking on his premises. Read
here.
I must confess I was expecting to find fights and a bit of violence but this has gone a bit over the top.
These poor guys are caught in the middle of all this. Damned if they do and damned if they don't. They risk wrath with their customers enforcing the law and if they don't they get fined.
The Internet, love and divorce.
The woman down the road is going for a divorce. I was talking to the husband who was walking down the road and he told me it what was going on. Basically, he lazed about watching sky sports all day while she pottered about on her computer. She met a guy on there through a friend of a friend somehow, built up a good relationship and eventually they got together. Little did I know when I set up the webcam what hot action was going to be transmitted on it. At least now I know why she asked so many security related questions and wanted one that could be moved easily. Whoohoo. If I'd have know I would have set up a false ID and had a go. Only kidding. (Fingers crossed)
The Internet is such a good medium for this sort of thing. It enables you to meet loads of people and find out their likes and dislikes with almost no risk. The only real risk is that the person at the other end is telling lies and actually is a lorry driver called Brian but in the end all that does is waste your time. A longer term courting over weeks with an open exchange of thoughts, likes and dislikes can usually sort out all but the most determined.
That is part of the reason I like this medium so much. Ugly people like me can talk to people and build up relationships based on what is beneath the surface and not what is visible. Once beyond the difficult getting to know you stage the true shell doesn't make any difference and when they turn out to be quite tasty but you are not it doesn't make any difference. It's amazing how many hot women are with some ugly men. They seem to have a much lower physical requirement than men. Or maybe it is because they are more desperate I don't know. Maybe this is why divorces where people run off with a lover on the Internet seem to becoming more common. It gives people a chance to build up a relationship without actually having to go travel outside the house. In fact even if you are unable to leave the house perhaps because of children you can still build one. No wonder so many horny women with young children are on these sites just waiting to be talked to nicely.
In the past I understood that most people meet their partners at work, either directly or through friends. The rest out at pubs and clubs. With the current PC climate where even looking at a woman can be construed as sexual harassment that avenue must be a dangerous one and avoided unless a relationship has already built up. No wandering through the office and trying to pick up someone you like any more. Well, not if you want to keep your job anyway. And the way things are going there soon won't be anyone at pubs and clubs they will all be closed when drinking is banned and because dancing is too competitive.
This could mean a massive culture change as no longer will the studs with the muscles and bad boy attitude be picking up the birds but the fat lad with the spots who actually knows how to string a few words together.
Yeah! The future is for nerds. Too bloody late for old chaps like me though. Unless I can talk this hot bird I was chatting to on IM into being daft and in fact my wrinkles and grey hair is down to the fags and booze i have consumed. Girls love the bad lads.
Fantasies and real life.
Isn't it funny that when certain things are said we all imagine something different. We all have different perception of things particularly things we know so little about.
In a previous
post Henry commented on lesbians not looking like we expect from the films...Err... So Henry says anyway. We all imagine lesbians look like the lesbians in the movies as that is usually the extent of our knowledge and experience. I knew I had a picture so I went looking and here we are.
So just in case people have I have a negative perception about lesbians I can state now I do not. I think they are great. In fact it seems to me the number of girls who have at least experimented is unbelievable. Yet, they are not classed as lesbians. Us blokes on the other hand are less forgiving. We avoid any contact and avoid even the slightest hint that there could be. If someone is even suspected of being interested in another bloke they have to either become gay and join them or make new friends. Strange that.
I find it curious that girls regularly sleep with each other overnight in the same bed. No thoughts or cares. What we hear our imaginations run riot. Us blokes, if we can't get home, are relegated to the sofa and then at every opportunity that fact is pointed out.
In fact my views on gay people as a whole is easily defined. I don't mind them at all. I have no interest in their lives and wouldn't put any restrictions in their way. In saying that one area is
adoption which I'm not too sure about. There may be others I have not thought of yet. But in general as long as they don't try anything with me I'm not impacted. I don't care. Well.... maybe the girls.... providing they look like the top lot. That includes forcing gay rights down my throat. I'm not interested. And just to be certain I'm certainly not going to be subjecting my bottom to the attentions of any bloke no matter how gentle he is.
Happy Birthday
Well my granddaughter is two today. She seems to be having a great time. Lot's of presents for her to play with. And she is now away to visit my ex-wife's where there will be more. She sure is lucky. After that she is off to the Blue Planet Aquarium. She will be worn out tonight after her busy day.
Incidentally I started this blog on the very day she was born which makes this blog two years old as well. Happy birthday. The very first
article I wrote was a birth announcement and the main news that day which was the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes. A murder then covered up by our own government ironically in an action more reminiscent of his own country's justice system.
The appliance of science.
In 2004 two robots arrived on Mars to start what I remember is a three month study of one of our closest, in astronomical terms, planets. After three months they surprised everyone as they just went on going. Takes a lickin and keeps on tickin. I must confess I was really impressed by this technological feat.
Now here we are three years later and I was just reading about how they may be under threat from the weather. Those bloody 4x4s again. Read
here. I thought they had died ages ago.
Fingers crossed that they keep enough power to keep going but even if they don't it is still an excellent result for the team. I'm impressed. Mainly because I know how difficult it is to keep any complex bit of kit going for any length of time without sending someone there to touch and fettle and get it started again. Three years is a long time without a squirt of oil, a rub down of the panels or any real interaction at all. The designers and builders will undoubtedly have gained a well deserved reputation for this.
The outcome on Cash for Honours.
Well, well. After all the talk, the incriminating EMails the arrests the recommendation that some charges be brought and look
here. No charges at all. *cough* fix.
Now they say it has damaged trust in politics, read
here, but let's face it they were badly damaged long before this fiasco started. And you can only damage something that exists. Who nowadays trusts politicians? This result after all the leaked information does not help either. Are we to believe that when they can prosecute a guy for defending himself and yet they can't find anything wrong in that cesspit? I'm sorry but I just don't believe it.
So now it will be all this damage and yet there were no crimes committed. Blah, blah, blah. Next thing there will be call for changes in the law saying that serving MPs or whatever can't be investigated and that all political documents must be classified.
Strangely enough there seems to be quite a few things happening that falls into the hands of the politicians. Nothing too serious but enough to enable some changes in the laws that they have wanted for a while.
This is how conspiracy theories start. :)
Does this show true commitment?
A survivor of the Red Mosque raid said she was prepared to die to defend the Red Mosque. Read
here.
Now they were raided, their leaders killed and lost the site to the government. yet she still lives. I think that kind of contradicts her media statement. She clearly doesn't understand what being prepared to die means. She has an excuse though but it's clearly been made up. I do believe I know what her problem is though.
Maybe she was a bit unsure about the 72 virgins she was going to get. How many Muslim lesbians are there do you think?
What! This is so wrong.
Another of these tests I found on Theo Sparks blog when I was looking for the
pornarticles on the latest status of Iraq.
You are The Devil
Materiality. Material Force. Material temptation; sometimes obsession
The Devil is often a great card for business success; hard work and ambition.
Perhaps the most misunderstood of all the major arcana, the Devil is not really "Satan" at all, but Pan the half-goat nature god and/or Dionysius. These are gods of pleasure and abandon, of wild behavior and unbridled desires. This is a card about ambitions; it is also synonymous with temptation and addiction. On the flip side, however, the card can be a warning to someone who is too restrained, someone who never allows themselves to get passionate or messy or wild - or ambitious. This, too, is a form of enslavement. As a person, the Devil can stand for a man of money or erotic power, aggressive, controlling, or just persuasive. This is not to say a bad man, but certainly a powerful man who is hard to resist. The important thing is to remember that any chain is freely worn. In most cases, you are enslaved only because you allow it.
What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.
I'm confused about Global Warming.
Now I was reading another publication that says cows contribute more to global warming/global cooling/climate change or whatever it is this decade significantly more than our cars, buses, planes and everything else we do. Read
here. I know it's old but this thought just popped into my head while reading a cowboy book by JT Edson. I know, I know, but I like them. Bad guys do bad, good guys sort it out and kill or jail bad guys. Everyone happy except the bad guys which is how we like it. Unless you are a whingy whiney PC guy anyway.
Anyway, the theory is that our industrial expansion is causing this latest thing. Now the book reminded me that before the white man got to the Americas there were herds of buffalo so big they covered hundreds of acres and each herd comprised hundreds of thousands sometimes millions of animals. Now there was no
whingy whiney do good parasitesenvironmental scientists monitoring the waste output but it must have been immense. And we stopped it. Do we get credit? No, we don't. So bearing in mind that we took a while to build up to our current level of CO2 output we must have amassed some serious carbon credits there. Bear with me. If we have to apologise for slavery which we personally didn't do we should get some credits from the same sort of convoluted theory of other things we didn't do.
Now my question is. Why didn't the world records for this period show a decline in output around the time we wiped the herds out? After all we were not producing that much at the time and they claim our cars show a increase, despite the fact that each cow seems to correspond to 100 cars or something, so how come millions of buffalo don't show but our cows do? Just confuses me.
It's almost as if, No it can't be, Could it? Surely we haven't got vegetarians joining in with the global whatever bandwagon? Taking disjointed facts and exaggerating or misinterpreting them?
Well I have news for them. I know some
vegetablesvegetarians and I can assure them that removing cows only moves the methane production up the food chain.
Maybe that is why they forced the smoking ban. Can you imagine everywhere full of vegetarians. Enclosed places. One careless strike of a match.
Puts the terrorists into their place and shows why the priority is on smoking and not terrorism. long term plans by our PC led elite. Millions would die trapped in enclosed places. Hoping, praying that someone had a lighter to end it all.
Just thinking out loud. Makes a kind of sense really.
Google's Privacy Statement.
There was an article on Google's changes to alleviate concern about potential privacy issues. It was very enlightening. Unfortunately, it didn't alleviate my concerns. Read the full story
here.
Now cookies are something I don't have a major concern about. I kill as many as I can. Of course some sites refuse to work without them. Blogger is one. It works, in a fashion, but there are many things you can't do so it needs to have cookies enabled. So for very specific sites and tasks I have cookies enabled. The default is ask. I usually then click the remember this and block button. Removing the block if I can't work on the site and I actually really want to use the site. Otherwise I go elsewhere.
Now with Google's decision to keep them for two years may sound really good of them. But what it means in reality is if you go to a site with links to Google, Blogger is one, there are also some sites with a Google search facility on their site, and loading that site refreshes the Google cookie for another two years. And there are loads of these sites around the Internet the chance of anyone not hitting one in two years is pretty slim. So all in all a meaningless offer.
Now seeing as most people can just disable them anyway and it is not really a major concern for me. I flush mine regularly anyway. The part that did concern me is the bit near the bottom.
In March the search giant said it would anonymise personal data it receives from users' web searches after 18 months.
The firm previously held information about searches for an indefinite period but will now anonymise it after 18 to 24 month
Now why do they need to keep any personal data at all from searches? There can only be one reason they want to record who is searching for dwarf porn or something. I'm in for it now. From now on those dwarf sites will see no more of me. I can assure everyone I was actually looking for research purposes. There are a lot of perverts out there. Although what would that give them? Nothing they wouldn't get from an immediate analysis and anonymize the data before storage. It can only be to pass the search data on to law enforcement. Brilliant. So now the NSA and therefore GCHQ know what we all go looking for and our little fetishes. I wonder what my record at MI5 looks like now. Maybe I should pay my £10 and find out. Oh wait! Forgot it's not covered.
Yippee. So far from putting my mind at ease I'm going to avoid Googles search engine as much as I can although I suspect they all do the same now. Is there any non US or UK search engines out there? Looks like it's time for some sort of IP anonymiser. A good one just like the crooks and terrorists use to avoid these data captures.
How realistic are these polls?
By my reckoning it seems that nearly a sixth of household keep supplies close so that when the burglars come they can supply a burglar with the tools needed to subdue them. How kind. Saves those poor burglars carrying dangerous tools around outside where they may hurt themselves.
That's what I gather anyway from the latest survey by Cornhill Direct. Read
here. It says nearly a third of households keep weapons in their house for burglars. While just over half of them would be prepared to use them. I'm assuming therefore that the remainder have them so someone else can use them. Am I missing the point?
Is it just me that thinks there is something strange going on here? People are lying somewhere. Maybe they are worried about getting a visit from plod because they have weapons in the house.
That didn't take long.
It seems that it has not taken long for the car bombs to change policy and allow the Congestion Charge cameras to report in real time the movement of vehicles within London. Read
here.
Data protection and separation out the window exactly as was predicted before the cameras even went in. What a shocker.
Now monitoring all this data in RT is a tremendous task. They just won't manage it except under certain special operations. Now remind me if I am wrong but I thought the congestion cameras merely encircled the
taxation zonecongestion charging zone. If so what is the point of RT access. That would just give the entry point. You wouldn't know where it went. It would be gone before you got there if it wasn't already being followed.
In reality all that will happen is that all the data will be permanently stored for police access and analysis. Eventually linked to the millions of other tracking cameras in the UK.
I suppose I'm surprised it took so long. Plans were in place just needed an excuse.
I need a holiday.
I've been working non stop on this project for months. It's not very challenging but needs constant supervision and precise documentation. Documentation is not one of my main skills.
Today after dozens of phone calls, EMails and IM messages, I can state quite clearly that if I had stayed in bed all day there would have been just as much done. Probably more as I was interacting with people all day.
Oh and to top it off, the car battery was flat, I can't get my keyboard fixed for a week, I've electronically insulted two friends and the final indignation the baby has reprogrammed my laptop to come up with shift lock or something and I can't turn it permanently off. How embarrassing.
I need a holiday.
Fiddling with peoples lives.
I see again that the government is now fiddling with the curriculum again. Read
here. To be honest I don't quite see why they are making these particular changes.
Education certainly needs fiddling with but somehow I suspect that this fiddle won't fix any of the problems there are with it.
Quite a few years ago there was concern that our brightest and most able were leaving the US to go to new lives across the world taking their skills and experience. Skills and experience we required to keep the UKs position in the world. The government wanted to stop it. Well, they have certainly succeeded. I would think that no country wants to take our current output of unthinking illiterate drones. Another target met. Yet again not with the intention that was meant at the time but still, another target achieved.
Why we just don't go back to what we were doing in the mid 20th century that provided our current bunch of entrepreneurs, thinkers and skilled tradesmen? OK. It's clear that we would have to get rid of 50% of the teachers. The useless ones, the hangers on who would not have a job if they did not work for the government and those that have socialist leanings and force it on to our kids. I suspect the two are related.
It's clear that the only ones providing a decent education in reality are the private schools. Their curriculum have been unchanged for many years. Their output prized by the private sector while the public sector output is being tested for basic literacy.
This is basic stuff and it has a significant impact on people lives. It needs to be fixed now. Already two generations have been treated to this failed social experiment. Politicians are not going to do it. I'm convinced most of them have their shoes with L&R clearly marked inside.
A ominous shift away from the US.
Well it seems that Gordo is more pro EU than pro US. He has delivered a statement that he wants to distance the UK from the US. Read
here.
Now putting aside the stupid headline. It seems that a very forceful point is being made. We want to distance ourselves from the US. Their foreign policy which is not exactly the best plan in the world is clearly too divergent from the UKs future plans. Gordo obviously doesn't want the congressional medal the same as Blair has been honoured with. Maybe he is after the honour of being a Hero of the Russian Empire or something. Most of Labour should get one too and they may do if they hand the UK over.
Now personally I've always believed we have done the right thing standing with the US. Now just to be clear standing with does not always mean we have to go off on their wars but at least generally their principles are honourable and align with ours. We should be close and if it wasn't for Blair getting us involved in his macho posturing we would not have to publicly announce a change like this.
Of course now it's done. It's official. The mood will change between the UK and the US. Bush still has nearly a year and a half to go. He won't be happy about this. Gordo probably a little bit longer unless he gets overconfident. Personally don't think he will. His policies are delivering now and not the results expected. He needs time to fix it. Although he, to be truthful, is gong to screw it up more. You might not think it's possible but it will happen.
I just don't see anything good from this announcement It's bound to be seen as an attack on Bush. Any influence, no matter how slight, will disappear. Any political hiccup will be met with less tolerance than before. Let's face it the US doesn't have too many friends now. They may very well take all their toys and stop playing with others. Still will be out playing but with their own balls and following their own rules. That won't be good.
Of course this movement will move us closer to the EU. This can't be good. This will be seen a a coup there. The UK/US relationship must have been a thorn in their side for a while.
I would have preferred a switch the other way. Closer ties to the US and a lessened relationship with the EU. But there is no way a socialist government would do that. I was just hoping they would leave it as it was, as it has been for decades.
The question is why? Why now? I can only think of one reason. There is going to be trouble in the Middle East with Iran, Syria etc. tied up in a war with Israel. The US will undoubtedly join in. We won't be with them. We will be leaving them out on their own. Instead of doing the right and honourable thing we will sit on the sidelines with the French and just watch while we wait for the UN to fix it.
How stupid can we get?
Here is a flight from LAX to the UK. The crew see a suspicious person board apparently bypassing security. So they abort the flight and land at JFK where the passenger was removed. It was a false alarm, as he was an employee, but it was lauded as the right thing to do. Read
here.
Now again I mentioned this to someone else and they agreed that it was the right thing to do. Better safe than sorry and all that. I'm starting to seriously consider how bright some people are especially as I am supposed to be working with professional people.
If the crew were so concerned why didn't they just investigate at the time? Why wait till they are in the air?
Why didn't they contact the company as he had used an employee bus? Might that have been a clue?
If it had been a terrorist being in the air over the ocean may be preferred but when the plane is clearly landing then anywhere in the air is a good a place to do your thing.
Of course I'm making the assumption that this will cost American Airlines some serious dosh especially in this time of depressed profits. I'm willing to bet these companies are getting fed up with all this and these sort of things are not going to look good at review time. The government cock ups they can't do anything about but the pilots they sure can.
In the meantime I am getting really concerned about why I need to explain everything to ordinarily bright people. We clearly are getting to the situation where everything is just accepted without question at all walks of life. Won't be long before there are few enough of us awkward b4$^4&ds so they can just round us up and throw away they key. Better safe than sorry.
New mens magazine with many useful articles.
Sadly when I took out a lifetime subscription I misunderstood what it was about.
Government steps up to bat again for the bad guys.
Well it seems that when our pitiful terrorists failed to disrupt our daily lives with their terror attack on Glasgow airport it was our government who again saved the day. For the terrorists that is. Read
here about how the government managed to turn the terrorists failure to disrupt our way of life into a success, by disrupting our way of life on the terrorists behalf.
Wonder how long it will be before they start killing people too.
I can just see it in court. Your honour when Singh Majeep , (thank you Henry), pulled the box of matches out in the exclusion zone of 50 Miles around Glasgow airport he must have know we would cock it up and therefore the 54 fatalities are down to him and him alone.
The ultmate punishment.
Today I was asked my views on the death penalty. Nothing heavy just a guy at work asking my opinion on something because he knows I'm very much a harsh punishment guy. It's funny really because it fitted in with a couple of comments on a different post so I thought I would explain my position.
I do believe in harsh punishment for crimes. They should ensure that the punishment is not so light it makes it worth the risk. Penalties should be plain, defined and scalable. So that repeat offenders get a multiple of the punishment. That goes for all crimes up until crimes like murder where you should lose your freedom for ever. Life in my case would mean life. The death penalty would not be an option.
Several years ago I believe that the Death Penalty was a viable option certainly for many of the criminals out there. Some horrific crimes have been committed and the sentence was clear. Death. Their crimes were so bad. Hell, I even say Blair should be tried for treason and executed.
But, in all honesty, it's just words. I still believe that some people deserve to die. There is no doubt. But, my primary reason for being against the death penalty, is that any justice system we have devised so far is so flawed that we always make mistakes. Any punishment that does not allow the situation to be adjusted in some way cannot cater for these errors.
We find that our enforcement teams are so fixated on targets that elements of doubt are minimised or ignored completely and it is not unknown for them to aid the case by planting evidence because they just 'know' it was that person who did it. No evidence just means they covered it up well. Nothing happens to these people despite the fact that they have perverted the course of Justice.
Now clearly the Death sentence is irreversible. Once performed there is no appeal, no new evidence, no confession that can change the outcome.
In my view life imprisonment is still a punishment. A life sentence should only end on death or vindication. To be forever imprisoned behind walls never to walk the earth is a real punishment as well. No easy way out.
The only real objections to this seem to be based on cost. I can sympathise with that. But at the same time we waste billions on funding people not to work and have kids they don't love or care for. It's not any different from that and could be much cheaper than it is. We could build lots of little concrete cube with the basic amenities. Place everyone with a life sentence in them. They don't need education, what is the point, they don't need rehabilitation, they ain't getting out and they don't need entertainment. Minimal interaction with the outside world. They are there to be punished. That would reduce the costs to what they would get if they were on the social.
Now I keep getting told that the death penalty s a deterrent and how the murder rate has increased since it was abolished in the UK. I'm not prepared to argue those facts as I am prepared to accept they are right. However, You just need to look at the prisons n the US where there are many many people waiting on death row plus many many more who literally get away with murder because people negotiate or threaten their way out of it and rich people buy their way out of it. That's not a deterrent that's not even Justice.
So, my views on the Death Penalty in full.
Government Project slips again.
It seems that no sooner did the statement come out that we were facing a minimum of 15 years in our new war, read
here, that it has now slipped to a couple of decades. Read
here for the words from the head of US forces in Iraq, Lt Gen David Petraeus.
Ho hum... So like all government projects this one is slipping already. It'll make the cold war look like a walk in the park. At least then we had our freedoms and the costs were not as high. Yet we were potentially in a war with someone who could do us real harm. Now we have a more expensive war against someone who can do us less harm.
Faulty Keyboards and laziness.
I screwed around this morning. Sadly not literally and then I got hit with a big chunk of real work just after lunch. The kind I actually get paid for so I had to swing into action. Unfortunately I didn't feel like doing too much action so I struggled through it with no time for blog visits or anything else.
So I'm finished now. Raring to go and see what is out there. As I was finishing my meal I suddenly remembered I was supposed to go into the office and get my laptop fixed. The 'I' and the space keys are playing up. Now I've forgotten it'll be at least a week before I can arrange something else. Oh well! I had more fun at home so it wasn't to bad. So if you see words that don't make sense stick an 'i' or a space in there and see if it makes any difference. Googles spell checker doesn't always pick them up.
It picked up 12 missing I 's n this post but missed three.
Fiddle, fiddle, fiddle.
My Blogger titles are back working again now. Maybe the 'enhancement' didn't work and they backed it out.
Hey Ho. Such is life.
Oh Goody. A new commitment to fear.
Seems that we have made the jump to make the War on Terror or replacement for the Cold War with the statement that we are facing a minimum of 15 years for the battle. Read
here.
Now this may be good for the military supplies in the West. It may also be good to keep the plebs in fear and under control. After all a war requires sacrifice. Something like ID cards for example. Taxes to fund the war. Laws passed to remove rights.
Funny that.
All that for a raggedy taggety army that can't even set off simple bombs with some level of competence. With leaders in a far away land with no real C3I. With solders who are so backwards the only thing they can use are weapons supplied by us or simple edged weapons. We are vastly superior in all respects, technological and moral yet we cower in fear.
The media and our government has a lot to answer for. And, we, the people, are being lead like sheep to the slaughter. All the time thinking how nice it is to be looked after. How stupid are we?
In the meantime we will fight with one hand tied behind our backs in our usual PC way so that we can allow them some victories to justify a tightening of the grip.
What a future we are leaving our kids.
Don't know what is up with Blogger. It's not letting me post any titles. Been playing up all day. looking at others blogs though they don't seem to have any problems.
It seem the police have now finished the investigation into the cash for honours case. Read
here.
About time. Funny it should finish just after Blair leaves the PM role. I'm hoping the timing is significant.
I wonder how long the CPS will hang on to it before any final decision is made?
One law for one.
Stolen from '
Whatever It Is, I’m Against It'
Yesterday, Bush repeatedly called the Scooter Libby sentence excessive. Today, he twice referred to it as “severe,” an entirely subjective term.
Speaking of severe, this is what Bush said in 2000, defending never having used his power as governor to commute a death sentence: “I’m confident that every person that has been put to death in Texas, under my watch, has been guilty of the crime charged, and has had full access to the courts.”
Funny that he thinks the courts have failed his pal though. Must be an exception.
This guy writes some interesting and
humorous comments on his blog around the US administration mainly.
Defining priorities. Getting it wrong again.
Well it seems my comment that we are on the watch list for MI5 is true. And as we all have to be investigated they miss out on the real bad guys looks like it is also true.
Lurch at Gun Culture tells a story about how police officers discussed his blog at his firearms renewal interview.
He says 'It seems that my crappy little corner of the blogosphere has come to the attention of the police, and they don’t like it.' He is concerned that they may not renew his firearms license. Read the full story
here.
So when these nutters finally manage to kill someone because MI5 have not got around to investigating them I wonder how many of us will be facing bright lights in some dingy dungeon because they didn't like what we have written on our blogs. Of course that won't be mentioned.just shortage of manpower, too many suspects. We need to change the laws etc.
Somehow I think that, yet again, we are setting our priorities wrong and when the government does this it does actually come down to life and death. This country is still drifting towards a Soviet utopia where controlling the people is more important than anything else.
Our ancestors must be spinning like tops in their graves. Giving their hearts, bodies and lives for freedom. Look at it now. It seems it was all for naught.
Where men are men and women are ... err,, men too..
Well I see that another muslim guy has been found wearing a burqa. Read
here about his thwarted escape attempt from the security forces at the Red Mosque in Islamabad.
Now it seems strange to me that these guys seem to hate women so much but they don't mind wearing their clothes. I wonder if he wearing some fishnet tights and suspenders, maybe even a thong?
It's nice to see that although they hate homosexuals cross dressers are fine for Islam. Although how they identify the homosexuals with all that cross dressing going on beats the hell out of me.
MI5 stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Our security services are coming under fire in the papers after it emerges that some of the terrorists arrested were known to MI5. Read
here.
Well what a surprise. The security services have tabs on tens of thousands of these plus undoubtedly people like us to monitor as well. So it's unlikely that they would not have the names of any of these loonies on file.
This is the problem that we will always have when we cast a net so wide it captures everything. We just cannot process the information fast enough for it to actually be any good. Information overload. A failure with many systems not just this one.
Of course our useless government would press to enable everyone picked up in this trawl to be held incommunicado until they can investigate them all. Useless bunch that they are.
Personally I think we need to let these guys get on with what they are doing and get the politicians off their backs. The politicians don't add anything, in fact, we know they screw things up. MI5 need to use their experience and knowledge to target the real suspects and narrow the catch down to those who really are potential terrorists. Get rid of the PC shackles that are in place to let them profile and target the people they want to. All within the law already but there may still be funding issues which need looked at
Of course now Gordo is PM he won't want them to spend so much. He certainly won't want to increase it any. lol. Sorry mate, Blair left you in the lurch the same as he did with everyone else on this island while he swans off. Don't worry though. His time will come.
Terror links to NHS.
It seems that the latest batch of terrorists all have links to the NHS. Read
here.
Makes sense really. It kind of provides an explanation of how they managed to invest so much money, time and effort while not actually achieving the primary or secondary objectives.
It's the culture they have adapted too. It's clearing suppressed their other culture.
I wonder if this sort of thing is worth some investigation. You see our culture is fairly well advanced. The muslim one not so much. As Mr Haddock said '
An evil stone age cult'. I like it. But they can clearly adapt to the NHS culture of not being interested in healing people. So they are adaptable in some way.
More research is needed. Must be worth £1M of anyones money. Maybe £2M. Contact me via EMail if you are interested. Keep the message vague I don't want the tax man to find out.
Customer Service
I've just bought an item from a web store I've dealt with in the past and not had issues with. Sadly this time I have a problem. So try to contact them to discuss the issue. It seems that their stupid customer department is running on Myspace. It makes sense for a virtual company to have a virtual customer services department but the only thing is I can't contact the stupid thing. Myspace won't let me connect up and to be honest I don't see why I should consent to my details getting passed to the KGB in the US just to communicate with them for a customer service issue. Unfortunately for them I have an EMail address from a previous discussion where they wanted me to partake in a survey so i have sent it out through that. Let's see what happens.
On the other hand a couple of weeks ago I bought a DVD from Play. I had a minor issue with it skipping in one place. Not a big deal but I like my DVDs to be spot on. I dialled into their web page, sent them an EMail via the web page and two days later I was contacted with instructions. Sent it off, they refund the postage and a few days later I had my replacement. Now that is customer service.
It seems the exception nowadays.
Hi Anais
Hi Cutie.
Her new pad and very nice it is too. I kept expecting her to tell me to take my shoes off.
Nice outfit she is almost wearing.
Behind the curve.
Now I'm bit behind the curve on the attacks with my play time.
But from what I understand there have been three attempts at terrorist attacks. Two car bombs in London and a car fire in Glasgow. Read
here.
Now I hear that we have heightened security to panic level 3 and clampdown level is due to be increased to remove additional liberties and rejustify ID cards.
But if these guys are terrorists then the fear that they are causing is out of all proportion to their skills. These guys, with all the education they have had, can't do what kids can do all over the world. Blow things up.
But, why did they fail to blow the vehicles up in London? It seems that if they could do enough to build them and get them there then they should have been able to blow them up. Let's face it most of these home made bombs blow up without any help at all anyway. But they didn't manage it. What poor training they had. They couldn't even read books available freely off the Internet.
Then the guys in Glasgow. Jeez they would have been better just driving around running people over instead of just setting fire to their own vehicle. What were they thinking? Or more to the point were they thinking? Were they able to think?
Now I know these guys have IQs normally associated with microscopic pond life but come on. We are supposed to be at the peak of the intellectual ladder. Sounds like these guys have not even started to climb the ladder yet.
If they are all as stupid as this then I propose we just walk up to every Muslim looking guy on the street and ask them if they are going to blow themselves up in a terror attack. In addition we can get customs to ask each one as they come through. That way we should be able to account for most of them. The rest we will have to sort out the normal way via the secret squirrels.
Although they could be more of a danger to themselves. I remember a story from Uncle Fester who said that there was an FBI film about the bomb makers. Where we set up a lab and mix small amounts under controlled temperatures they mix it in a bathtub with their safety device being another muslim in the next room praying to Allah.
If there just wasn't so many of them. Now what can we do about that. Oh! We are already doing it. We are killing them in droves in Iraq and Afghanistan just need to do it faster and more effectively.
So much for the benefits of multiculturalism.
Interesting Day today.
Basically been catching up with the chores I should have been doing for the last few weeks. I would like to say all done but sadly have managed to start them all without finishing one. Ah well, there is always tomorrow.
Went into Second Life for the BlogPower awards just after mid day. I like to get places early. I can usually pick the best seats near the back so I can heckle in peace. It's like being back in school. Although I was under strict instructions to behave.
Well there are many reports out there with pictures and possible a video so I won't go into too many details but suffice to say the awards occurred with very little issue and considering it was the first time it was very impressive. We can thank Tom Paine for hosting the event and James Higham as compere for making it such a slick event.
Anyway once the
boring speeches were overawards were presented we retired to Tom's airship to relax and party. Boy, could we dance. I didn't realise I could do so well.
By the time we had finished dancing and our little political discussions it was quite late in the day and too late for me to continue the work I was raring to do. Sad that.
All in all a very interesting day and to be honest I enjoyed myself more than I thought I would. It made a nice change and as a way of getting to know other bloggers it was easy and painless. Only thing is you still don't know what they look like. Except Jocko who clearly looks the same in RL as SL and DK who we have all seen on
crimewatch18DS.
Schools are now educating the first generation of informants.
No wonder they don't have the time to teach them to read, write or do sums. They are too busy lining them up to inform on their parents. Teaching them to fill in all the boxes and keep records on what evils their parents get up to.
Seems that they are starting to flex their muscles on smoking in the home where kids are now being encouraged to stand up for their rights. Read
here. It seems once you are past 16 you don't have any rights.
I would suggest for all those smokers out there that you encourage your kids to smoke from an early age. Then instead of informing on you. You could threaten to take them down with you if they inform on you. Of course this means you will have to buy them fags. Although if you ration them then it should work out reasonably OK. Get started now and let them know how manly or ladylike it makes them. She them some tough guy films where the hero is smoking and the lady is demurely smoking. Have to be from last century though. The wimps have already been working hard in that area.
Of course drinking is next. Should be easy enough to put a shot in their bottle and build up a dependency so they won't inform on that either. Make sure that all that is in the house is booze and soya milk or some other crap. That will help. So that will only leave the next areas after alcohol, food and recycling. Food we are already working on as they tend to eat what we eat anyway. So we have already started the indoctrination there. We just need to expand it to include booze and fags so the principle is already in place.
Recycling is a problem though. Perhaps get them to sort and filter the crap as part of their chores might help. Then you can punish them when they get it wrong. Make their pocket money dependant on their performance. That should fix it. Get them against it at a young age.
Oh and don't get too attached to your kids. If any of them reject the booze and fags and actually sort the rubbish and are acting like true informers you need to be able to kick them into care at the drop of a hat. I can see the care homes the length and breath of the country full of Stalinist clones ready to go out into the world as traffic wardens, litter wardens, and green bin validation wardens. There will be no shortage of clones then.
Just thinking ahead as I do.
