It makes you think.
Been busy this weekend so not had the chance to do anything until later today.
However on my travels I bumped into an old friend whom I have not seen for a while. It was a very sobering discussion. her husband who is also a friend and who I met through her has just had a heart attack. It seems it also came with some form of stroke and he is now partially blind as well as requiring surgery and she thinks he will never work again due to the severity of the damage.
I was quite shocked. He seemed quite fit and he is only 33.
Makes you think about life in general.
What will be next?
Well it now seems that smoking behind the wheel of a car may lead to the risk of prosecution. Read
here about the new rules in the highway code.
For may read will. This It is another easy crime for our local paper pushers to solve. More ticks in the boxes and a clearly bad person given another reason to kick the evil weed. It's for their own good.
So you can't smoke in a company vehicle because the fairy police say so but they have clearly been wondering how do we make that cover all cars? Easy you simply say they are doing something else bad that we believe needs to stop. They guys need both hands on the wheel. I think I might get a car for a disabled person so I can smoke. Wonder how that will work?
You notice it also says loud music and passengers. That will make interesting police reports. 'I noticed the suspect talking to his passenger and in my view the driver were not in full control of the vehicle' Book em Danno. Another successful crime solved and box ticked one.
If only they put the same zeal into solving real crimes the UK would be a paradise. But of course the real criminals would not give up so easily nor can they pay as much and, the clincher, would be unlikely to end up inside.
Won't be long before they limit how much oxygen we can consume in one breath and how many breaths in a minute. Fat people breathing heavily would be forced to get by on less oxygen or lose weight. Of course politicians would have special exemption because, well just because they are oxygen thieves anyway.
Labour start to move on election.
Well the wheels have started turning on the labour marketing wagon. Read
here.
Looks like Gordo has decided to move before the whole thing falls apart around his ears.
This must be the best time for the Tories to drop Cameron and tell us they have been joking with us for a year and a half. Bring out a true leader who can lead us away from the current disaster.
Then we will see how stupid the British electorate are. Fingers crossed.
Maybe we should be doing this.
Here are these guys testing their faith against a bunch of ruthless killers and turning out in force. Read
here about the latest news of the protests in Burma or Myanmar or whatever.
Our guys are just incompetent and I cannot for the life of me see any of our police or army shooting anyone in a mass peaceful protest. Yet we all sit at home and whinge about our situation.
Wonder what has to happen before we make a move? is it really going to take violence in all our major towns before we wake up?
How it should work.
Seems this comic made a bad call and made jokes about the McCann and Jones kids in Liverpool. he was then booed off stage and won't be going back to Liverpool for a while. Read
here.
While I myself am waiting to hear some really good jokes on the McCann case I have already heard some unfunny ones on the Jones kid. Like most good jokes the punchline is usually cruel to someone and these will be no exception.
But did you notice that nobody from the government got involved here. No complains were made nor was someone arrested. That's what I love about Liverpool they solve their own problems without whinging or whining to some stuck up official. The guy has been dealt with, he has lost business and he left with his tail between his legs.
Of course now it is in the paper we could very well have someone from our wonderful police force seeing a potential solvable crime here and make a special visit. You never know.
What next for our useless police force?
Ridiculous as it may seem but it seems that our highly skilled hit squads are banned from riding pedal bikes in case the little diddums fall off and are hurt. Read
here. Might have to go home to mummy and mummy may call their bases and complain about their children being put in dangerous situations. The pencils and pens they use have sharp points. Have they had the relevant training? They could choke if they eat the numerous forms they have. We should be careful with the little diddums.
One thing I am a bit confused about though. is it not the same useless bunch that are being fitted up with tasers and running around with machine guns? How come they don't seem to be a health and safety issue?
As far as the two PCSOs, pretend coppers
1, that allowed a child to die so they didn't have to get their clothes wet and possibly catch cold shows enough is enough. Read
here. I hope that the parents sue the police and get these poor excuses for human beings never mind coppers kicked out of the job they clearly can't do and that they are haunted every night for the rest of their, hopefully painful, natural lives.
Respect and protect. It hasn't been that way for a long time.
1) Updated due to comments that they are not coppers.In my view though they are still coppers. They are not citizens as they have elevated privileges. They impersonate police officers.I see them being no different to the KGB style thugs we hated so much years ago.
I hope the laptops are better at figures than this lot.
Well it seems that the $100 laptop we hear so much about actually costs $188. Read
here.
It does seem to have a few interesting features though. I believe that the balls on the rail are teflon coated so they....oh wait. The laptop will be solar powered, a foot pump or a string pull. Sounds like an exercise machine as well.
Now I'm a firm believer in education and allowing people to improve their lot but I just cant see how this will do it. Most of the people this seems to be aimed at are scraping out an existence which seems to keep them busy. Are a few games of freecell and a vision of a life outside the village is going to help them? I just don't see how.
To me it seems that yet another group has put forward a proposal to get paid from our extorted money and been funded on another useless project. I suppose the good news is that we might actually get something out of it ourselves. I wouldn't mind a solar powered laptop to do basic word processing on. This lot will appear in someones bargain bin in the next year.
Well,well it's not just us that don't believe in democracy.
I was reading this article where the Dutch cabinet have rejected having a referendum on the ground the people may reject it. Read
here. Their subjects may not make the right decisions. So that's us, the Danes and the Dutch now who have proven that we don't believe in democracy.
When are the yanks going to invade, remove the dictators and install democracy? For the first time they really would get welcomed with open arms and providing they execute the leaders they can leave us on own. Because we already have US forces based here they wont need to invest anything really. Our army has been reduced so much we won't be able to stand up to them. Hell, they could do it as they float past on the way to Iran. Just don't forget the executions.
Could labour take the chance.
I thought that labour didn't have enough money to go for an election. According to Douglas Alexander they do. Read
here. Now these guys are not stupid generally in the area of self promotion and covering ones bottom so I was wondering if Gordo is considering a quick election?
He has no opposition, the wheels are still turning on the economy and at this stage the money can still be pumped in if something else falters. He can make the right noises to the Unions until after the election without the public getting their backs up by starting negotiations.
If he has the money this must be the best time for him. In less than a year the wheels will be well off, the public will finally be waking up and there might actually be someone leading the Tories who actually believe in conservative policies.
It will be interesting what is said at the party conference next week.
I wonder how quickly the tories can replace Cameron?
It's always someone else.
Got to laugh at this. The society we live in always has someone else to blame. Everyone has their freedoms reduced because they will not punish the wrongdoers because it is never their fault and they don't deserve to be punished. It is society, their parents, lack of chances, little willies.... whatever.
As I've said before I was deprived as a child. Nobody molested me or beat me up. I had a decent education so everything I do now is my own fault. I seem to be one of the few who have no one else to blame for what I do. A cross I have to bear.
Well it seems that some people were spending too much time on eBay and not enough on their jobs. They were sacked. Their defence? They are claiming that it's their bosses fault for letting them have access to the Interweb thingy. Read
here.
Well, I suspect they will stay sacked and their bosses will just cut off access for everyone else because of these guys. It's always the few idiots that ruin it for the rest of us.
Although, it was a council. I'm thinking they should go for discrimination. They were obviously picked on. After all who could notice a council worker skiving for two hours a day? It just doesn't add up. I think they might have a valid case there. Much better than the bosses fault.
Maybe these will not be so PC.
It seems bin Laden is calling for the Pakistanis to oust Musharraf. And not for the first time either. Read
here.
There is nothing like a war on many fronts and I've lost count of how many fronts this war is on. However with a bit of luck their guys can infiltrate the cells better than our guys who stand out like sore thumbs. Once bin Laden has declared war on the whole world surely that will reduce his supply lines to nothing. Where is he going to get his nutters from if he is fighting the whole world. Surely even these nut cases will work out he is fighting their people as well and actually wonder what they are fighting for.
I know human life is cheap. Mass produced by unskilled labour but even they must run out sometime. With a bit of luck the Pakistanis will take out their share before they come near us again.
The Blair Witch Project goes to print.
Finally, inevitably. She goes to print to get more dosh from the suckers of the world.
Must be in dire need of funds now they have to pay for things themselves.
Read
here about a deal to publish Cherie's autobiography.
You just got to love politicians.
Here are the palestinians firing rockets on a regular basis into Israel and Israel has show remarkable restraint by not nuking the entire area. This is clearly just a minor issue and not one to be worried about.
Finally though the Israelis have had enough and have declared the Gaza strip a 'hostile entity'. This means they can actually cut off supplies of electrickery and water to it.
The palestinians of course call this 'An act of war' You just can't make these things up. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.
Bad news for the palestinians though, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also said the US considered Hamas a "hostile entity" and added that the US "would not abandon the innocent Palestinians" of Gaza. Ooops. We are from the government and we are here to help you. Maybe now they might consider a change of tactics before it is too late.
No sign of Blair in this whole saga though. I wonder why?
Read the full story
here.
Government Mathematics.
Reading this article about police chases where it says that some police officers take needless risks in high speed pursuits. Read
here. It of course calls for them to stop and conform to a mandated standard. More rules for our poor coppers to stop them doing their jobs.
Now I don't know about you but I don't think they do. I've heard many cases where the won't pursue someone because it put them at risk. Such as when they are not wearing a helmet. It's ridiculous. I understand there was a smash up a couple of days ago where the police called of a pursuit on the M4. If they are going to take those risks then they should not be able to sue the police nor shall it be the polices fault. These whingey whiney people will find an excuse for the behaviour of everyone. Well except those that put their drink cans in the wrong recycling container anyway.
As an aside I was wondering about this statement. 'Deaths related to police pursuits peaked in 2001-02 - but about 40 a year still occur, according to research. '
In the same article we have this table.
So in reality we have a single year dip and the year before that is classed as a peak and the rate is still climbing now. I suppose as it's climbing we don't know what the peak will be so theoretically 40 is the last peak. Typical mind games. Although I don't understand why they don't use it as is supports their case. Civil servants, they make no sense.
UPDATE: I've just been told the BBC link page has been changed and this chart is no longer available. I can assure you that that data is taken from a screen dump of the original BBC page.
How easy we accept things.
I was browsing through the ASI blog earlier and came across this
article on the impact of Gordos complex tax grabbing rules. It refers to an briefing paper by Dr Madsen Pirie.
The main thrust of the article was "The UK tax system is well beyond the point at which complexity itself imposes costs and disincentives". true enough yet another article about it. Nothing new. calling for simplification and reduction in red tape.
Then I read this '....making clear the duties of citizenship and allowing individuals to feel they are partners with, not servants of, government'
Partners Eh! I thought they were civil servants. We are the masters and them the servants. or so I thought anyway. It's clear they are not servants and they have not been civil to us for some time. The quoted article admits that the current situation is that the government is now the master and we it's slaves and suggests, not even demands, that we are graciously allowed to think we are it's partners. Not even to be it's partners just think we are.
It's a bit much when a statement like that doesn't even get raised as a point by the ASI. It's clearly become so accepted that they didn't see anything wrong in it.
This must be the most tenuous link ever.
It seems when a cardinal called some art degenerate it was condemned as having Nazi connotations. Read
here. After all degenerate and art clearly have only the one meaning.
Where will it end? Will the use of any words used by the Nazis be banned.
Soll ich das Gas einschalten? Ja.
Every word ever used by the Nazi's must be banned. And lets not forget the VW Beetle.
Surely this must be a link too far even for these whingy whiney people.
A lesson to learn.
It seems that Iraq has failed 50% of the benchmarks set by the US. They set 18 benchmarks for political and military progress and only 9 of them have been achieved. Read
here. Although it is improving as they are one up from where they were in July.
Some valuable lessons are here just waiting to be learnt.
1) They need to set easier targets. They should have followed the examples set down by the UK who's targets are so soft that they are easily achieve able even if nobody actually was there.
2) The targets can be revised. If it looks like one could be failing it needs to be adjusted. Bit like the doomsayers do with Global
Warming errr Cooling ... Whatever it is this week.
3) If all else fails just lie about it like our government does with education, health and err... well everything.
These yanks have a lot to learn. Telling the truth sure creates problems for them.
Let's not confuse the issue with facts.
I found a link to this
article about the failure of gun control on Theo Sparks site. This sort of thing is the reason I go to his site. *cough*
It it using facts about legislation on gun control with comparisons on crime statistics for those areas. It seems to be pointing out the less gun control the less crime. Strange that because I seem to remember that gun control was going to solve every problem we had.
Although it seems a waste of time to me to even be mentioning this. Our politicians only appear to hear emotion and not facts. In the US the emotions of the gun crowd are loud enough to be heard. In the UK it's the whingey whiney crowd that make the most noise. The ones that believe in something so much they force their bigoted views on the rest of us. No matter how much the facts disagree with their biased views.
I love statistics.
But even I have to laugh at this piece.
The writer says ' Meanwhile, the number claiming benefits fell by 4,200 to 852,900 in August taking the unemployment rate to 2.6% - its lowest level since April 2005.' Read
here.
Super wow. In reality it could have gone up for the last ten years reaching a peak over the last eighteen months and now come down a little bit in real terms probably with the same manipulation of data that is a hallmark for this bunch of statistical manipulators. Unemployment, employment in a public sector job and those on sickness benefits all come to 43% of the population according to the statistic currently bandied about. On it's own then the fall is pretty unremarkable as the level of unemployment fluctuates regularly but this makes it look like a major achievement. Which for this government it probably is.
All I got from the article though is that private sector wages have gone up by more than last year while public sector wages have not. This must give ammunition for the public sector unions to demand compatibility. Which may actually blow the government wage rise targets. Poor chaps it would not be so bad for them if it was not for those private sector workers being greedy.
A Freudian slip. Gordo tells the truth.
Seems people are making a big deal about Gordos new economics speech. Read
here.
In it he says that 'We must never return again to those days when reckless promises that you could simultaneously cut taxes, raise spending and cut borrowing were made.' Their comments are that he clearly doesn't understand economics as it is possible to do all those things at once.
Personally I think that he is in fact correct because they can only happen together in a growing economy. In Gordos economy there is negligible growth. And there will never be real growth as he feeds his bloated public sector. So he is actually telling the truth yet everyone things it is an slip of the tongue.
Got to laugh.
This must put paid to an early election.
It seems that the unions are now going forward with industrial action over public sector wages. Read
here.
This must be a bit of a blow from Gordo as he knows that the piggy bank is empty and the punters don't want to put more in. With the wheels coming off the economy he knows that if he caves in and pays them then people will be very unhappy. The rise of the unions will be apparent for all to see.
Luckily still over 50% of the population is not scrounging off the rest. As long as at least 10% of the private sector are not Labour supporters then there is a chance.
Surely wont be long before the Tories drop their camouflage in the guise of that useless git Cameron and bring out a real contender. Someone actually with policies and not PR gimmicks.
Fingers crossed. Although with the state of politics I'm starting to believe that Cameron is not a front for a realistic Tory leader but actually what the Tories think is a good leader. God help us all.
What a guy.
Jeremy Clarkson may take the mickey out of the little guy. The big lump that Clarkson is. But you have to hand it to Hammond getting back with another high speed stunt. Read
here.
I bet the BBC lawyers were all wringing their hands with concern.
We need to stop all exercise now.
If it saves only one life it will be worth it.
Read
here about four children falling dead while playing football.
I never heard of this sort of thing before unless the kid had some sort of hidden heart complaint. What is going on? Four in one week.
It seems Osama may not be dead after all.
It seems that there may be a new video of Osama bin Laden available on the al-Qaeda websites. Read
here. Bugger.
Personally I was hoping he had crawled into a corner of some cave and died. He must he holed up somewhere cushy with someone looking after him. He does look a bit older there though.
I was wondering that maybe with him being out of touch he may not have heard our calls for him to come in so we could clear him from our enquiries. Bring a good lawyer though.
Improving the performance of the Police.
When I first read this article I just smiled. It is about the police being issued with, basically, ticket machines. Read
here. Good luck with that I thought. They were trialled by BTP, our railway police, wow, and the motorway patrol guys. Both have an emphasis on writing tickets and nothing else.
Then I thought a little bit more. It probably will improve the performance of our police force. No longer do they actually get criminals and go plodding around they just issue tickets now. Speeding, parking, drunk and disorderly, too noisy, too quiet, etc. these machines will make sure all the boxes are ticked and they will soon be reeling them out at a tremendous rate of knots. It will even tell them when they can pack up because they will have made their quota.
Sadly, not a police force I would have wanted to see. But it seems that it is here to stay.
This is a bit of a shock.
It seems Blair's Middle East mission is in trouble. Read
here.
This is the task for a true mediator. Someone with a bit of oomph and some balls to push things through.
Maybe they will find him something a bit easier next time. He can lay the tables for the real diplomats or something. Well, maybe with a bit of training anyway.
Got to laugh.
It seems that one of our chief constables has had some stuff stolen from his car. Read
here. It's understandable though he lives in a wild and lawless part of the world. England.
I wonder how many coppers were round that crime scene with their crime scene tools.
I also wonder if he is aware of the literature, which is all, besides speeding tickets, that we get out of these people, that specifically say don't leave items in your cars. Perhaps he needs to catch up with what his guys are telling punters every day of their lives. 'Here is a crime number sir, please report it to your insurance company and don't leave stuff in your car in future.' I bet his men are all having a good laugh now it's in the papers.
And if we believe that only stuff of a personal nature was stolen we will believe anything. Who takes personal stuff to work in a briefcase and then leaves it in a car?
Interesting comment about the Tory Party.
The Tory ex-deputy leader Michael Ancram is saying that the Tories should not lose their soul. Read
here.
An interesting comment I think. Mainly because I don't think the Tory party has a real soul any more. It was traumatised when Thatcher was stabbed in the back by that bunch of losers and it's gone slowly downhill for years.
Then Cameron came along and changed it all. It went downhill rapidly after he came in with many die hard Tories leaving in droves. It's soul doomed to be tormented for eternity by the looks of things. A day, of course, being a lifetime in politics.
So I don't think it's actually going to lose it's soul. It's just it's soul lost the will to live over a year ago.
The sooner they get rid of that useless tosser the better. We need something else in the UK. Jeez, even the Liberals *cough* are looking good now and we know they have no chance.
The powerof the media.
I was reading this article about our strange punishment process that we call justice in the UK.
It seems that this woman wants to remove from sale some good educational books because her child was molested by the guy that wrote them. Read
here. Now I can understand her wanting revenge but why is it that every crackpot that want to go beyond our justice system gets space in the papers and in the news to spout their views. Jeez. I had to go to the trouble to sign up and write in a blog to put my bigoted views forward.
I remember a Star Trek episode where one of the main characters was going to be saved by a procedure created by a war criminal on her worlds inhabitants. I was going to save her life as the prognosis was not good but she refused because of how the treatment was developed. Of course being one of the main characters meant she survived without the procedure. But she had her principles. I have a slightly different view, wouldn't you know it, I think that if the results of the experiments were destroyed then all those lives were lost in vain. Sure, vilify the guy or creature, but don't throw away what was learnt. Knowledge is not good or evil but it's the use to which it is put that can be perverted.
Back to this guy. This is how he makes a living. OK, He ain't going to get many home visits with children from now on. Not unless the parents are in on it also anyway. Hey! It's not unknown. To deprive him of his livelihood is not a currently recognised punishment unless his livelihood involves directly interacting with children which this one does not.
Could you imagine it if every criminal couldn't have a livelihood after they came out of the nick. Wonder how they would get on in life. On the dole. Unlikely, if being unemployed was part of the punishment. They would have to distance themselves from wife's and children and I wonder what all these would have to do to make a living.
I know sometime, and this is one of those cases, that we should do more to protect the vulnerable members of our society but we don't. We have to live with it and until our justice system includes destroying peoples livelihoods as part of the punishment for crimes then perhaps the media would be better off just leaving these people to grieve in peace.
I'm actually wondering what is the benefit of a free press when they do things like this and yet allow our wonderful government and media figures to get away with what they do.
I'm dying to see how this works out.
Many years ago when I was IT manager in a large firm I was involved in discussions with Group IT over two shared projects that they were managing our our behalf. A bit like hiring an external firm to do your payroll and personnel processing. The services were signed up to by my predecessor who went on to a job with Group IT at HQ. Funny that. Anyway, during my time discussing the abysmal service levels we were getting it was obvious that they were, well..., crap and had no real chance of getting better. But Group HQ had dictated that Group companies could not back out of any existing services we had signed up for no matter what the service was like and we just had to wait until it got better. Wouldn't be long now was the standard report.
So back at the ranch. I had to stand up in front of the MD and the board and explain every month why we were paying over the odds for a very poor service. It got so bad at some of these meetings that I was being given a right slating and in the end I was told in no uncertain terms that I needed to fix the problem and I was not to come back with the standard excuses I had given in the past, which amazingly enough were actually just repeats as reported by Group IT.
So having to make up some new excuses was a bit of a problem. Group IT had used up all the realistic sounding ones several times over and it had already gotten to the stage when nobody from HQ wanted to speak to me between the times the service report was issued and the board meeting took place because they didn't want to be quoted verbatim.
So the next month I racked my brains. This took about twenty seconds but I did it hundreds, no, thousands of times. In the end I had a couple of really feeble sounding excuses based on the latest figures and reports from Group IT and I knew I would feel a right idiot reeling them out while I and everyone else knew they were made up.
In the end the very next board meeting I reported that the system we were using was clearly not fit for purpose and I was going to present a proposal for a purchase of a new system to be managed in house to cover both payroll and personnel on one platform. When I presented it at the next meeting is showed a clear breakdown of costs showing that we were going to do it for less than half the cost of the existing system. That Group IT was going to be 70% of the ongoing costs which would be saved when we activated our system. This saving clearly justified the cost of the system and I got my new system even though everyone in that room knew we would make no savings at all.
We paid Group IT for a system we never used for the next four years until I left the company. Every year I reported the costs up to management and every year they hid it in internal costs which corporate loved because it was keeping it in the company.
Now. What are these guys going to say? Read
here about a Russian Mayor bans a list of common excuses. This must be a job for consultants. They will be able to make up some new excuses. Can't wait to see what happens here. How am I going to keep my eye on it? Read about the executions or simply wait till our bunch implement it here.
