Whatever happened to "space" music?

Back in the 60's space music was the funkiest of quixotic jazz. Now it's irritating warbling and bleeps, aggravating enough to make you want to track the guilty DJ down from across the world and kick his fucking balls in.

Come on you cunts, give us decent, lounge-y space music again.

Now!

Gear up for a blood bath in Afghanistan

The fucking nutter with the stutter has opened his fat, flappy yap again:

Gordon Brown provoked surprise this afternoon by announcing that Britain's military presence in Afghanistan would soon be over 10,000, as he took the unusual step of revealing that there were around 500 special forces there.

"Surprise"? "Unusual step"? Talk about a fucking understatement.

Gordoom, you fucking mentalist, you really are entirely unfit to run the country. Why don't you just post all the details of our military operations and plans on the internet where everyone can fucking download them and study them at their leisure? It will make it a lot easier to kill soldiers, reduce demand for money from the military for pesky things like wages and weapons and ammo, less pension funding will be required, it's a win all round.

You fucking stupid moronic cunt-featured cunting IDIOT!

Franticism

I'm a little snowed under at the moment, work-wise and rashly, I've just agreed to take on a really, really challenging new side-project.

I suspect that for the next month or two, my posts here will consist of one-word ejaculations, like "Fuck!", "Cunts!" and "Tired!"

Let us see what transpires.

Does this smack of desperation to you?

Really, this is just incomprehensible:

The Climate and Health Council, a collaboration of worldwide health organisations including the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal Society of Medicine, believes there is a direct link between climate change and better health.

Their controversial plan would see GPs and nurses give out advice to their patients on how to lower their carbon footprint.

The Council believes that climate change “threatens to radically undermine the health of all peoples”.

Firstly, until fucking doctors can reliably demonstrate useful basic diagnostic skills and nurses can stop trying to kill us with egregiously filthy hospitals, they can fuck off trying to tell me ANYTHING.

Secondly, on what possible basis can you argue that my doctor needs to tell me to worry about something that's (possibly) going to happen in 100 year's time? Fuck off, already, I haven't done my Christmas shopping, I've got e-fucking-nough to worry about.

Thirdly, how fucking desperate is this? We've caught caught the pro-AGW "scientists" cheating like absolute motherfuckers, so now they're wheeling out the fucking doctors and nurses?

Fourthly, ALL peoples?

And this is really the point which sets off my bullshit detectors on the whole AGW scam: there will be no benefits to warming. Everybody will be worse off. Instead of not freezing to death in winter (which is much more prevalent than broiling in summer) you will, instead, be killed just as hard by a warmer summer. The increased rain that will fall will only cause floods, there won't be fewer hose-pipe bans or better crops or anything like that.

And what are these fuckers getting so exercised about anyway? It's hundreds of years away, we don't know what the consequences are going to be and we don't even know if it's happening at all. You might as well tax us to help prevent another planet-shaker comet, for fuck's sake!

But I can see we need to keep our eyes on Professor Mike Gill:

"We have the evidence, a good story to tell that dramatically shifts the lens through which climate change is perceived, and we have public trust."

Mike, sweetie: there is no fucking evidence, your story sucks balls and I don't trust the NHS to tell me the fucking time.

What the fuck is it with these jumped-up, overweening, nannying, hectoring, bullying fucking doctors, anyway? Stop fucking sticking your busybody, authoritarian fucking noses into things that don't concern you. Start fucking doing your jobs properly.

Until you do, you can all fuck off and die.

Cunts.

Update: Leggy and Dick are equally unamused.

The wonder of English life

Seriously, I have to wonder if it's me. I was stuck on a train, not late, but after dark with a large bunch of staggering drunk football supporters, one of whom thought it was the very acme of drollery to eject the most repellent flatulence I've ever had to survive (and anyone who has been in a Dubai taxi will know that it's a high bar!) when he wasn't staggering around bashing into people.

At one point, I thought the adrenalin- and booze-fuelled twats were going to kick off, because I could hear them hurling abuse at each other, even though my noise-cancelling headphones.

So there I was, on a wonderful English train for the best part of two hours, freezing on top because all the windows were open to allow the stench to escape and roasting on the bottom because the heating was on at full chat, eyes watering from the stink and occasionally having a fat smelly arse bashing me on the shoulder while enjoying the wit and banter of a bunch of drunken thugs.

And suddenly the socialist French looked so appealing.

Ah, the wonders of the NHS

An old acquaintance of mine was born in Essex, but emigrated to one of the colonies when he was young. A long time ago. He grew up in the colonies, lived there, worked there but on his retirement, he hankered to return to the land of his birth.

The fool.

So, he called me the other day to say he was going back to the colonies for some pre-Christmas sun. It was a Sunday, I think. On the Wednesday, I got a phone call from him to say he was in hospital. I found this rather odd, although he had mentioned going to the NHS doctors a couple of times (fruitlessly, of course) before his trip. He had called his old colonial GP on the Monday morning and arranged to see him on the Tuesday. After a very thorough examination, the colonial GP decided that he had a hernia. So he booked him in for some new surgical technique on the Wednesday, the operation was done immediately and by the Thursday, he was out shopping and enjoying his holiday.

And I have to say, it sounded wonderful.

Imagine phoning up your GP and being able to arrange to see the doctor you want to see at a time you want to see them. The doctor then spends a whole fucking hour checking you up because you "feel a bit out of sorts" and actually finds something. You know, doing actual diagnosis and stuff. You are then wheeled into a (clean) hospital of your choice within 24 hours for what is, frankly, not exactly a life-threatening condition and operated upon immediately. You leave the hospital better than you entered it and without a dose of MSRA.

Or, of course, he could have gone to a hospital in Essex.

Turns out all I needed to cheer me up ...

... was for my ex to have an attack of THE MENTAL so that my day would be fucked up completely and I'd have to rearrange my life at no notice again.

Fucking women, Jesus, why do we bother?

Better than Weird Al?

Technically, certainly.

Black puppy?

Despite it being a lovely day and despite having the penis extension available for a brisk run, I feel down. I woke up feeling like the world is on my shoulders and I can't seem to shake it.

I had to laugh

I never read stuff in my spam folder, but the subject from one of them made me laugh:

FBI OFFICE GET BACK TO US IMMEDIATELY IF YOU DONT WANT US TO ARREST YOU FOR YOUR OWN GOOD‏

Those Americans, eh? One day they'll learn to speak English.

Fuck

According to Bishop Hill, the wagons are circling:

1) Lord Rees (Royal Society) to be asked by UEA to investigate CRU leak.

2) Foreign Office and government leaning heavily on UEA to keep a lid on everything lest it destabilises Copenhagen.

3) CRU asked to prepare data for a pre-emptive release in past couple of days but trouble reconciling issues between data bases has stopped this.

Prepare for massive spin and damage control from the vested interests and rent-seekers.

CUNTS!

Sk8erbois

I've just been out perambulating. My meanderings led me pastone of these purpose-built "skate parks" where da yoof can hang out and impress each other with their tattoos and their "moves". [Ed: is this how they say it?]

I was kind of baffled to see a group of 15-20 very, young boys all dressed in uniform (jeans, black t-shirt, beanie) "hanging out" and "busting moves", especially since it's a school day and they all looked of a school age. Indeed, about half of them looked like they should be in primary school.

I suppose if I were to go speak to them, I'd be "shanked" or accused of kiddy-fiddling, the schools are too busy brainwashing kids about global warming to worry about truancy and the rozzers would probably have me for wasting police time.

So, what the fuck kids - enjoy the day out, your education will sadly almost certainly be none the worse for cutting class.

Update:

Time to go to the shops, folks!

But it's not what you think. You need to go lay your hands on some K-Y Jelly:

Dubai’s successful but hideous entrepot model depends on the confidence capital markets, and as a rule markets don’t react to nasty shocks with a shake of the head and a song and dance routine. It’s as if plague has descended on every stock exchange in the world; investors are fleeing for safety. Overnight, shares in Asia collapsed between 3 and 5 percent, and the FTSE, Dax and Cac40 have opened around one percent down. Prepare for another black day.

Will this blip develop into crisis? As the FT’s leader points out, Dubai’s fellow emirate Abu Dhabi can cover its neighbour’s stated debt. That it hasn’t implies that either the Sheikh of Dubai has had too much sun or the debt is larger than alleged. It is too early to turn panic into pandemonium by heralding the coming of the double of dip.

How far are British banks exposed? Gordon Brown has been terribly keen to define British identity, and under his leadership we now have an answer: our pre-eminent national trait is a flair for investing in duds. J.P. Morgan report that HSBC’s liabilities are £17bn and RBS’s stands at £200m, and who knows how far Barclays (who described Dubai debt as a ‘good buy’ last week) are exposed. If the UAE decides against rescuing its brash junior member, will further demands be made on the UK taxpayer? Between you and me, I suspect we will get a share in the Beckhams' grotesque bungalow.

Yes, taxpayers: it's time to drop your trousers and grab your ankles again. Because the banks have now been given their "moral hazard pass" by this wonderful government, and we're about to keep banks in lucre.

Fucking again.

Won't somebody think of the cheeeeeeeeeeldren

People mock when this cynical broadside gets deployed. But really, what is this if it's not "Won't somebody think of the cheeeeeeeeeeldren"?

3 questions about climate change were asked of children and young people across England…

And not a single one of them was "what if AGW is a scientific fraud?" No, instead they were asked:

What do you think that you can do about climate change?

What can people in your local community, government, and the international Copenhagen conference do about it?

What worries you the most about climate change?

And who is it who is indulging in this shameful manipulation of children's opinions? Why, it's the ever-lovely Ed Bollocks and his cuntish crew, who don't have the time to make sure kids are taught how to read, write and do sums, but are definitely brainwashed into believing this guff.

Cunts.

Shock! Horror!

I've taken a momentous step today: I've added Tom Harris to my blogroll.

I hope it damages his credibility as much as it damages mine!

Hmmm...

Good: when your offspring volunteer to cook.

Not quite so good: when you find the gas is still open the next morning.

My flabber is absolutely fucking gasted ...

I thought this was a pisstake. But if you follow the links ...

Dear Apple

Why the fucking fuck should I need to fucking reboot my fucking PC, just because I've updated the worthless cuntwaftery that is your fucking QuickTime arsebiscuit? And why the fuck does your useless crap fucking lock up my browser when you pop up a dialog box telling me that your shit needs to be updated? And why the fuck does it make no difference whether I click "Update" or "Cancel", I still need to fucking reboot my browser?

Jesus, you fucking halfwits make Microsoft look competent by fucking comparison.

Idiots.

This is going to run and run ...

Tip of the clown wig to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

Prepare to lose a day or two ...

... here.

Climategate: The Musical

Google Wave Invites

I have a couple, if anyone is interested. Email me ...

I just can't be arsed any more!

I'm going to stop doing the Informix Roundup. It's tedious and of limited interest to most of my blog readers. If anyone else wants to pick it up, let me know.

CRU Computer Systems

What?????????????

What the fuck?

In fact: what the fucketty fucking fuck?

A music industry executive has been arrested for refusing to send a tweet to out-of-control fans of the teenage pop sensation Justin Bieber.

Officers wanted Roppo to cancel the 15-year-old Canadian star's album signing at a shopping centre in Long Island, New York after the crowd of pop fans swelled to 3,000 and began to turn aggressive.

Police claimed that the executive's refusal to intervene led to several people in the crowd sustaining minor injuries.

Roppo has now been charged with assault, endangering the welfare of a child, obstruction of governmental administration, reckless endangerment and criminal nuisance.

At a court hearing on Saturday, prosecutors condemned Rocco's "reckless behaviour" and claimed he helped create "very dangerous situation" with children being pushed against the glass of a second-floor balcony.

"It's a miracle more kids and more people weren't injured," said Diane Peress, the Nassau assistant district attorney.

Roppo denies all the charges and his record label has expressed astonishment that he faces criminal charges for not Twittering.

Astonishment? Jesus. I'd be suing the police for "aggravated extraction of urine".

Observers have also questioned how sending a tweet would have calmed a crowd of delirious pop fans.

Ya think?

Just another reason why we shouldn't defer to governments

Especially supranational governments, like the EU:

In sum, these results call for a measured policy of greenhouse gas emission reduction. There is reason to believe that European climate policy is overly ambitious.

Now, this comes from an AGW believer and expert in economics and actually, I think he's being a little disingenuous. The EU is not being over ambitious, they are just pissing the money away. I don't see any evidence that the EU is actually being effective with their policies - I see them taxing the fuck out of us to keep the French farmer happy.

Well, fuck them all - they can stand or fall on their own fucking merits. (The whole article is actually worth a read though: there is maths to show that we are being severely over-taxed in the name of saving Gaia. Quelle surprise, as a French farmer might say.)

Update: As if by magic:

Rich countries pledged $410m (£247m) a year in a 2001 declaration - but it is now unclear whether the money was paid.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has accused industrialised countries of failing to keep their promise.

The EU says the money was paid out in bilateral deals, but admits it cannot provide data to prove it.

And still we have people telling us how wonderful and benign and good the EU is.

Cunts.

Secrecy isn't safe

This chap is quite mild in his criticism of the "Climategate" fuckwads, considering that a) he's Greek and b) he was on the receiving end of some of the shenanigans outlined in the CRU emails. But he makes some interesting comments, which have interesting parallels with "Expensegate":

This brings me to the last point I wish to make: secrecy versus transparency. One interesting lesson from this story is that secrecy is corruptible—and corruptive. The CRU people and their collaborators who wrote all these documents felt, no doubt, safe behind their secrecy. They must have felt that this secrecy was their best weapon: to censor differing opinions, to develop “trick” procedures, to “balance” the needs of IPCC, and even to “redefine” peer review.

Unfortunately, current scientific ethics are based largely on the assumption of secrecy—as in the anonymity of reviews. Apparently, as the CRU story highlights, secrecy is not safe. By analogy, how can one be sure that the archive containing the reviews of a journal (with reviewer names) will never be hacked and its contents released on the internet? Of course, there are also lots of other ways that secrecy gets (self-)destroyed. For example, it is often easy to find out who the anonymous reviewers of a paper are.

So, I hope that, as this story continues to unfold, it gives us pause to consider how secrecy and anonymity are non-productive and destructive practices in science. Indeed, through such consideration, we may come to realize that transparency forces us to be more productive and progressive in pursuing the truth—particularly in science.

Yea, verily and forsooth -- the exact same things could really be said about the corruption of our political classes.

I would never have guessed, @iaindale

You could have knocked me over with a feather:

I'm more of a meat and two veg man

The Graun

What you will see as a headline in the Graun:

Leaked documents reveal No 10 cover-up over Iraq invasion

What you won't see as a headline in the Graun:

Leaked documents reveal CRU cover-up over global warming lies

And yet they have the audacity to bitch about bloggers.

Cunts.

If this had been Bush ...

... you just know that it would be highlighted and mercilessly lampooned by everyone. How come this cunt gets a free pass? Iz it becoz he iz blak?



Tip of the clown wig to the Whited Sepulchre.

This ...

... is pretty good!

You know what? I don't care ...

... if HGV drivers are the fucking salt of the earth and are personally responsible for all the good things in the world. I'm fucking sick of being stuck behind the moronic cunts who bully their way into the traffic using their vehicles as weapons and I'm especially fucking sick of spending half an hour waiting for one tosser in a truck to overtake another fucking tosser in a truck.

I hope you all fucking die tomorrow. Horribly, miserably and fucking painfully.

Cunts.

What a monstrous pile of cunt

So I get in my fucking car and I drive off to Leeds for a get-together with some of the other divisions in the company.

Well, I have to tell you, that was definitely worth spending a whole fucking day in the car:

• A bunch of nit-picking cock-sniffers and makeweights bitching on about how the PC division, upon which the company was founded 20 years ago, is no longer fucking front and centre. How they're not accorded enough respect, or dragged in front of customers often enough.
• A bunch of senior managers actually fucking wittering on about how their divisions' logos were not displayed prominently enough on slides, for the fucking sake of fucking fuck!
• People telling us that we had to spread our cheeks on the profitable side of the business to salve the egos of the unprofitable side.

And that's without the dry as dust presentations.

Fucking hell.

Since I'm travelling ...

... this seems apt ...

I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning

Those of you who visit Twatter will almost certainly be aware of @BevaniteEllie, who is apparently a middle-class simpering ninny who styles herself The Stilettoed Socialist.

Dear Ellie is a bit of a Labour fangirl - her favourite sexual fantasy is a three-way with Harriet Harman and Jack Dromey.

Can you really imagine jilling off to this?

Anyway, nasty, violent trolls like me get blocked on Twitter by Ms Gerrard and her intellectual equal, Kerry McCarthy for saying unpleasant things and being mean. This did not stop the not-at-all-nasty-or-mean Ms Gerrard from ... well, read it yourself.

People in glass houses, Ms Gerrard, people in glass houses ...

Hmmm...

Roll your own, if you haven't already.

Life in graphs -- an occasional series: Part 14

Fin.

Jesus

... fucking wept:

As discussed, she got the job because she was a available and Europe wanted a woman.

That's how the EU does business, folks: horse-trading, quotas and bullying. And still people think we need more integration with these cunts!

Now there's a headline I have no problem believing

Cunt:

Gordon Brown 'went for second best to spite Tories'

Is there no depth the monocular mentalist scum will not plumb for cheap and tawdry political advantage?

It's fucking even worse, because Mandelsnake looks like a fucking hero by comparison:

Gordon Brown rejected advice from Lord Mandelson to seek one of the big economic posts in the European Commission for Britain once it was clear that Tony Blair could not succeed in becoming Europe’s first president, The Times has learnt. Instead he settled for the post of EU High Representative for Baroness Ashton of Upholland.

The Business Secretary and other ministers believed that one of the EU’s three big financial jobs — running the internal market and financial services, competition or trade — would have served Britain’s interests better than putting such an inexperienced figure into the foreign affairs role.

Instead Mr Brown allowed himself to be persuaded — bounced according to some EU sources — into accepting the foreign affairs job by a combination of Europe’s Socialist leaders and José Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission.

There were also claims that, in exchange, Mr Brown did a deal with President Sarkozy to give the internal market portfolio to the French, sparking criticism from the Conservatives.

Reading between the lines here, this looks like a broadside from Mandelsnake over the bow of the "good" ship Brown: he is saying that he would not have done things that way, so that when it all goes tits up, he can point a finger at the bogey-muncher. I reckon he'll pull the plug from his support of the Gorgon if the snot-gobblin' king does one more stupid thing.

With a bit of luck, it will all go bang just before the election.

Update: I'm not as dumb as I look.

Life in graphs -- an occasional series: Part 13

Life in graphs -- an occasional series: Part 12

What does "equal" mean?

Equal:

• be identical or equivalent to; "One dollar equals 1,000 rubles these days!"
• be equal to in quality or ability; "Nothing can rival cotton for durability"; "Your performance doesn't even touch that of your colleagues"; "Her persistence and ambition only matches that of her parents"
• having the same quantity, value, or measure as another; "on equal terms"; "all men are equal before the law"

The last example is strangely apt, because I see that our favourite "Women are Equal" cuntwaft is looking to keep women out of prison. As Ross says, this is prima facie evidence that she planned her crime rampage.

But really, why do we allow this abuse of our beautiful language by these venal fucks? In this case, "Women's Equality" actually means "preferential treatment of women, just because they're women". The "Equality and Human Rights Commission" actually promotes not genuine equality, but a number of different special interest groups who somehow deserve preferential treatment.

And "Human Rights" -- what crap is that? A bunch of woolly-headed non-rights designed by Eurocrats to make it sound like they have our best interests at heart while actually making it perfectly acceptable for the state to trample all over our genuine rights ... and responsibilities.

Well, you cunts: fuck you all. I don't think we need to send these motherfuckers a copy of 1984 or V for Vendetta or Animal Farm this year. Let's send the useless sacks of shit a fucking dictionary instead.

Enervated*

After a week that has included some lovely highs and some even more terrible lows, I feel a little drained. Usually when I say I'm going to take some time off, it inspires me to write more -- but this time I think it might be a quieter weekend than usual.

*I've been reading it, OK?

Life in graphs -- an occasional series: Part 11

Fuck off, then!

Bless!

Sir Hugh Orde, top quangocrat at APCO, hints that he'd quit if the Conservatives go ahead with plans to democratise control over local policing.

Fuck off then, you jumped-up overweening quangocrat! And take the rest of your company directors with you.

Cunt.

Leaked IPCC emails

Please note before we start that this story has not yet been validated. The information could be true, some of it could be true and it could be a complete fabrication.

However, Steve McIntyre has confirmed that his emails are genuine and untouched. There is also a goldmine of data and programming code in the file that will allow skeptical researchers to identify what methods the IPCC have used to justify man-made global warming.

So, purely on the strength of the raw data and programs released, this is interesting.

And if the emails prove to be true, the repercussions of this could even exceed the expenses scandal.

Update: Jones (one of the scientists caught with his trousers down) says it's real, but I think he's just saying the base of it is real - someone could have still amended the contents of individual emails and data, so don't start brandishing those pitchforks yet! He's just saying it's not a complete fabrication.

Update 2: Someone has pointed out that it's unlikely Jones would have 'fessed up without a press officer handling the press. I'm not sure that a media whore "scientist" would necessarily handle the press without supervision, but there are little chips that are keeping me open-minded on this one. It really does seem to be too good to be true.

Update 3: Full writeup of the interview with Jones:

By Ian Wishart

The internet is on fire this morning with confirmation computers at one of the world’s leading climate research centres were hacked, and the information released on the internet.

A 62 megabyte zip file, containing around 160 megabytes of emails, pdfs and other documents, has been confirmed as genuine by the head of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, Dr Phil Jones.

In an exclusive interview with Investigate magazine’s TGIF Edition, Jones confirms his organization has been hacked, and the data flying all over the internet appears to have come from his organisation.

“It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails.”

“Have you alerted police?”

“Not yet. We were not aware of what had been taken.”

Jones says he was first tipped off to the security breach by colleagues at the website RealClimate.

“Real Climate were given information, but took it down off their site and told me they would send it across to me. They didn’t do that. I only found out it had been released five minutes ago.”
The files were first released from a Russian fileserver site by an anonymous tipster calling him or herself “FOIA”, in an apparent reference to the US Freedom of Information Act. The zip file contains more than a thousand documents sitting in a “FOIA” directory, and it prompted speculation that the information may have been in the process of being compiled for consideration of an information act request.

Jones, however, says the files were not contained in a “FOIA” directory at the Climate Research Unit.

“No. Whoever is responsible has done that themselves.”

“I’m not sure what we’re going to do. I’ll have to talk to other people here. In fact, we were changing all our passwords overnight and I can’t get to my email, as I’ve just changed my password. I’ve gone into the Climate Audit website because I can’t get into my own email.

“It’s completely illegal for somebody to hack into our system.”

In one email dating back to 1999, Jones appears to talk of fudging scientific data on climate change to “hide the decline”:

From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@[snipped], mhughes@[snipped]
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@[snipped],t.osborn@[snipped]
Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow. I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd [sic] from1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.
Thanks for the comments, Ray.
Cheers, Phil
Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit

TGIF asked Jones about the controversial email discussing hiding “the decline”, and Jones explained he was not trying to mislead.

“No, that’s completely wrong. In the sense that they’re talking about two different things here. They’re talking about the instrumental data which is unaltered – but they’re talking about proxy data going further back in time, a thousand years, and it’s just about how you add on the last few years, because when you get proxy data you sample things like tree rings and ice cores, and they don’t always have the last few years. So one way is to add on the instrumental data for the last few years.”

Jones told TGIF he had no idea what me meant by using the words “hide the decline”.

“That was an email from ten years ago. Can you remember the exact context of what you wrote ten years ago?”

The other emails are described by skeptic commentators as “explosive”, one talks of stacking the peer-review process to prevent qualified skeptical scientists from getting their research papers considered.

Update 4: A very nice précis of the contents identified so far, by Bishop Hill.

Iain Dale made me laugh

Ah, yes, Tory expense fiddlers: Decisive Dave smote down upon them with furious anger, didn't he? Unfortunately, he put the wrong person in charge of the clean-up crew:

When will it end? The Telegraph has the story tonight of Conservative MP David Curry, the new chairman of the Parliamentary Standards Committee (no, really), has been accused of claiming £30,000 of taxpayers' money to pay for a house he hasn't set foot in for four years, after being banned by his ex wife.

Now, remember, it's only a tiny handful of bad apples, chaps! It really isn't a case of every single one of the motherfuckers robbing us blind! Really!

Oh, and the Tories? They're much better than Labour. Honest!

Facepalm

While trawling a couple of forums I frequent, I came across this little gem. The forum in question has a section devoted to group buys. Whenever a group buy is in progress, the buy will be made into an "announcement" and then people can either partake or not.

It's been like that since the forum opened more than five fucking years ago.

Today, a group buy was about to close when this gem of an exchange took place:

Spazmong: Is it worth sticking a post about this group buy in the General Discussion section? I think the Group Buys section's Announcements is a little out of the way for how people usually read the forum. I was completely unaware of it until I heard about it from Pete.

These people actually breed, you know.

Jesus fucking wept!

Don't any of you fuckers ever work? I spend a day away from my computer and I come back to over a hundred fucking blog posts.

Don't you motherfuckers have anything better to do with your days?

Oh ...

And the trip in this morning was pretty special too. Quieter, but I managed to find myself sat next to a sweet old dear who happened to be farting Zyklon B.

Unfortunately for you all, I survived.

Hell is other people

's children. There's nothing I love more on the miserable journey home on the train in the darkness of winter than a screaming snotball running around a train while the parents sit there obliviously.

Fucking spawning cuntweasels.

Life in graphs -- an occasional series: Part 10

Coruscating!

I do like this:

Sagittarius (22 NOV-21 DEC)

This week you'll stop worrying about all those police warnings of strange, angry man lurking around your housing estate with his hands wedged permanently down the front of his pants. It was you all along.

And:

Taurus (April 20-May 20)
Start spreading the news. You're leaving today. You'll make a brand new start of it, but I'm afraid your name will still be on the register until July 2019 at the earliest.

And:

Gemini (21 MAY-20 JUN)
If you're having issues with a work colleague, why not send them one of those passive-aggressive emails and copy their boss in on it? Everybody loves it when they get one of those.

And:

Cancer (21 JUN-22 JUL)
A productive week as you crush your friend's gentle Christian faith under the relentless heel of your humourless atheism, leaving them bereft of hope, solace or joy. Serves the fucker right.

£2000 a year?

For taking money off me, for drafting laws that I don't want, for making my legislature useless, for thirteen fucking years of unaudited accounts, for the draconian EWA, for ignoring the democratic wishes of member states, for pushing ahead with greater integration, for persecution of whistleblowers, for promoting climate change hysteria, for all the nannying fuckery, for complete unaccountability:

fucking thanks, you motherfucking cunts.

Life in graphs -- an occasional series: Part 9

Bio-engineering

I read so much crap about the horrors of bio-engineering. You'd swear they're breeding fucking triffids to eat us all, or something, rather than finding ways of feeding more of us than ever before, for less money.

But here's something I don't think anyone can disagree with:

Land mines are currently strewn throughout 87 of the world’s countries, and each year they cause 15,000-20,000 new casualties, the vast majority of which are inflicted upon civilians. Sifting through minefields to remove these hidden threats is currently a dangerous, tedious, and expensive process, however scientists at the University of Edinburgh recently announced that they have engineered a strain of bacteria that glows green in the presence of explosives, making mine detection a snap.

Oh, those evil, deranged bio-engineering lunatics...

Remember the War of the Worlds panic?

If you don't, read this. Luckily, we're much too fucking sophisticated to fall for this kind of crap now, aren't we?

Oh.

It gets better:

NPR has more on NASA scientist David Morrison and his efforts to calm the ensuing public hysteria, but survivalists are already planning for the big one. Pretty funny, right? Not according to Morrison: 'I've had three from young people saying they were contemplating committing suicide. I've had two from women contemplating killing their children and themselves. I had one last week from a person who said, "I'm so scared, my only friend is my little dog. When should I put it to sleep so it won't suffer?" And I don't know how to answer those questions.'

Cunts.

Does this make a better case for space exploration?

So, we know that apart from waste disposal, nuclear energy is the way to go: low "carbon footprint", reliable, relatively cheap, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Turns out there's this teensy-weensy problemette:

Perhaps the most worrying problem is the misconception that uranium is plentiful. The world's nuclear plants today eat through some 65,000 tons of uranium each year. Of this, the mining industry supplies about 40,000 tons. The rest comes from secondary sources such as civilian and military stockpiles, reprocessed fuel and re-enriched uranium. "But without access to the military stocks, the civilian western uranium stocks will be exhausted by 2013, concludes Dittmar. It's not clear how the shortfall can be made up since nobody seems to know where the mining industry can look for more.

Fuck. This is a bit different from the oil situation, because we know where there is lots more oil, it's just not economically feasible to dig it out ... yet! But if we don't know where the uranium is, then we have a much more immediate problem.

So, ironically, it turns out there might be a use for all those old nuclear weapons after all:

There is one tantalising ray of sunlight in this nuclear nightmare: the possibility that severe energy shortages will force governments to release military stockpiles of weapons grade uranium and plutonium for civilian use. Could it be possible that the coming nuclear energy crisis could rid the world of most of its nuclear weapons?

But once they're gone, then what? Well, as per the title of this post: we know that whirling around in space are vast lumps of various minerals and metals. Maybe we need to start thinking about a space mining program.

Or maybe we just need to start accepting that we will need other means of fuel, like coal and oil. And that they are here to stay.

The Postman shows his true colours

MarkReckons has saved me the effort of typing up the facts from the Private Eye:

A couple of years ago, the MP for Hull West and Hessle was very concerned about the possibility that an asylum seeker who had found refuge in his constituency might be sent back to his country which has a dangerous human rights record and where in the MP's own words it:

would be devastating for him, his family, indeed it could prove fatal... There are few cases where we need our system to work more than this one.

However last month, the Home Secretary returned the 35-year-old asylum seeker to that country. The one with the dangerous human rights record.

Oh did I mention that the Home Secretary is (and was last month) the MP for Hull West and Hessle, Alan Johnson?

That's right. In a move that exhibits a monumental level of hypocrisy, the very same asylum seeker who two years ago Mr Johnson was pleading to not be sent back was actually sent back by Mr Johnson himself.

Far from having picked a winner, I think some bloggers have blinded themselves to the scum-like nature of all politicians.

Just because he's not the snot-gobblin' king, does not mean that Alan Johnson is any fucking better. And Johnson is shaping up to be yet another nasty, bullying piece of work.

Commuters: grab your ankles!

The train companies are getting ready for 2010. If the railways were actually privatised, and not in this shambolic quasi-fascist clusterfuck that the Tories set off under the Leaderene, we would have actual competition, lower fares and greater efficiency, choice and comfort.

But no, the fucking winner-picking, simple-shopping fucktards can't let any of this shit go, can they?

Cunts.

O ... kaaaaayyyy...

Another Ballsup

The old Ballbag is putting himself about today, isn't he?

Ed Balls, is calling for relatively hefty spending increases elsewhere. Apparently, Balls has asked the Treasury to grant his department – the Department for Children, Schools and Families – real-terms spending increases of 1.4 percent until 2014. That's an extra £2.6 billion in total – and goes beyond previous Labour commitments to "protect" schools spending.

It's a brassy move by Balls and one which is sure to aggravate his colleagues. After all, remember when Labour called Cameron "Mr 10 percent" because the Tory decision to protect health spending implied 20* percent cuts to other budgets? Well, according to the FT, Balls's impromptu request would mean 12 percent cuts for other departments - rising to 20 percent if Labour also protects health spending.

And why is he doing this?

In the end, it's hard not to see this as leadership positioning on Balls's part. Deep down, he must know it's unlikely that he'll get the chance to spend the 2011-2014 schools budget anyway – so this is mostly about striding the post-election landscape as The Man Who Saved Schools From Cuts (until the nasty Tories got in).

Isn't this just the most damning indictment of modern politics? Playing games with the ruined finances of the entire country to "position" yourself for party leadership in 2013 or whatever. And wouldn't it be typical of the uncritical media to let him get away with this shit, too?

This man represents the worst of venal self-interest that is the hallmark of politicians through the ages -- and they are especially fucking unloveable today.

I hope you get face cancer and die a miserable painful death long before you get the chance to "stride the post-election landscape", you unspeakable fuckface.

*I guess this is a typo and should be 10 percent.

Life in graphs -- an occasional series: Part 8

Ballsup

Looks like Ed Bollocks has been comprehensively outflanked by his civil "servants":

“The keys to controlling your Minister are travel and distraction”. The aside was pure Sir Humphrey, but based on the Tweeting of Ed Balls, the principle is alive and well.

And just remember, Balls is apparently one of the very smartest men in the Labour Party. Just goes to show: you can be an intelligent fool. Well, he can, anyway.

Here we go again!

I wonder what one of my favourite fucktards is laying the groundwork for now?

Sophisticated networks of older men may be grooming hundreds of British children to be trafficked within the UK for sexual exploitation, the charity Barnardo's believes.

Now look: I'm the parent of a British child and I have perfectly normal parental concerns. And I live, like most parents, with a background awareness and fear of Paedogeddon. But something in this story just doesn't add up:

At the time of a snapshot survey last month by the charity, 21 projects were working with 609 sexually exploited children, around half of whom go missing on a regular basis. Ninety of them – spread over 15 projects – appeared to have been "internally trafficked".

609 sexually exploited children and half of them go missing on a regular basis? 90 are "internally trafficked"? What the FUCK? Go missing from where? Where are their parents? If 90 of them are being trafficked, why the fuck aren't they in some form of protective custody? Why aren't all 609 in some form of protective custody? These are kids we're talking about here.

And indeed, even if they were adults: one of the two reasons this frothing lunatic anarcho-capitalist sees for the existence of any kind of state is to provide the individual protection from the predation of other individuals. And these kids are, from what I can make out, clearly having their liberty and freedom trampled all over.

What possible reason is there not to take these kids into protective custody?

Something is fucking seriously missing from this picture.

Imogen – not her real name – was 13 when the man she thought was her boyfriend started driving her around the country, taking her to hotels in Leeds, Bradford, Manchester and London for nights at a time.

Hmmm. I've just realised that something else is missing from this picture. Is this perchance a celebration of the delights of multi-culturalism? Could this not be perchance construed as a potential racial "hate crime"?

Anyway, let me guess what will come from this:

• More taxpayer money for Barnardo's
• More badly-formed, ripe-for-misuse legislation for the cheeeeelrdren
• Lots of ducking and diving about who is doing this
• No positive outcomes for the actual children involved

She [some Barnado's droid] added: "The children we work with feel a terrible sense of shame. They've been forced to do awful things by the adults who groom and control them – yet somehow society blames them. A child cannot consent to their own abuse."

Society blames them? Fuck off, you dozy cunt: I blame the motherfuckers who traffic them and I blame the government and children's charities for failing to protect them. I.e., I fucking blame you, you cunt.

Still, Martin Narey is OK, isn't he? He gets the big bucks and the chance to spout shite in the national press.

The cunt.

Quote of the nanosecond

Hah!*

But what we really did was screw around - and pretend we knew what we were talking about.

*It's on page 2

You read it here first, folks!

See? Somebody's listening!

Twitter, SSL and security

This story got me thinking:

A Turkish grad student has devised a serious, real-world attack on Twitter that targeted a recently discovered vulnerability in the secure sockets layer protocol.

The exploit by Anil Kurmus is significant because it successfully targeted the so-called SSL renegotiation bug to steal Twitter login credentials that passed through encrypted data streams. When the flaw surfaced last week, many researchers dismissed it as an esoteric curiosity with little practical effect.

For one thing, the critics said, the protocol bug was hard to exploit. And for another, they said, even when it could be targeted, it achieved extremely limited results. The skepticism was understandable: While attackers could inject a small amount of text at the beginning of an authenticated SSL session, they were unable to read encrypted data that flowed between the two parties.

Despite those limitations, Kurmus was able to exploit the bug to steal Twitter usernames and passwords as they passed between client applications and Twitter's servers, even though they were encrypted.

The reason he went after Twitter was:

Twitter proved an ideal platform to carry out the attack for several reasons. First, every request sent over the microblogging site includes the account holder's username and password. Second, the site's API made it easy to post the contents of the intercepted data stream into a message that an attacker could then retrieve.

Finally, many Twitter users send and receive messages using third-party applications. Many of those programs ignore error pages like those that would have resulted from Kurmus's attack, preventing victims from knowing anything was amiss.

So, here's my thinking on this: even though Twitter have fixed the bug on their side, you can rest assured that there are others. Twitter's implementation and "oauth" external authorisation model mean that it's always going to be a popular target.

The first thing you have to do is make sure you don't have a similar login/password combination on any other site. Always make sure Twitter has a different password to any other site that has the same login.

The second thing you have to do is to change your Twitter password fairly regularly. This means that even if your account is compromised, it won't be for too long.

Thirdly, always keep your eyes open for weird messages or behaviour. If something odd happens, it's probably worth changing your password immediately.

Security is a pain in the arse, but it's a price you have to pay.

RIP Edward Woodward

I wonder if he'll be cremated?

Some good news, at least!

Via the Speccie:

The Times has a fascinating story on how Labour’s lack of cash is forcing it to give up on seats and groups of voters. The paper reports that seats with a majority of less than 3,000 have been effectively written off. So even before the campaign has begun, Labour is basically forfeiting 60 seats.

And what is their majority? 64 you say? And they're giving up 60 of those before they even start? Hmmm ... this could be a bit rough.

I don't really want a Tory (or LimpDumb) landslide, but I do want Labour crushed into irrelevance. I want the Gurning Bananawaver and every other remaining Labour MP to sit at his desk after the next election and think "how the fucking fuck will we ever, ever, EVER, get this show on the road ever again."

I want them to party like it's 1899.

Dear Barrenness Buscombe

Can I be the first to say that you are more than welcome to help yourself to a very large portion of STFU with a side order of FOAD:

Ian Burrell, who edits The Independent's Media Pages, has a very disturbing blogpost about the ambition of the Press Complaints Commission to regulate blogs. The new chairman of the PCC, Baroness Buscombe, seems to have gone native already and wants her empire to grow ever larger.

She wants to examine the possibility that the PCC's role should be extended to cover the blogosphere, which is becoming an increasing source of breaking news and boasts some of the media's highest-profile commentators, such as the political bloggers Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes. Do readers of such sites, and people mentioned on them, deserve the same rights of redress that the PCC offers in respect of newspapers and their sites?

"Some of the bloggers are now creating their own ecosystems which are quite sophisticated," Baroness Buscombe told me. "Is the reader of those blogs assuming that it's news, and is [the blogosphere] the new newspapers? It's a very interesting area and quite challenging."

She said that after a review of the governance structures of the PCC, she would want the organisation to "consider" whether it should seek to extend its remit to the blogosphere, a process that would involve discussion with the press industry, the public and bloggers (who would presumably have to volunteer to come beneath the PCC's umbrella).

Oh, and for dessert? You can fucking suck my balls, bitch.

Life in graphs -- an occasional series: Part 7

Twat Gear

Enough already, somebody take this tired old fossil out and put it out of my misery.

The last couple of series have suffered from ADHD-like levels of inability to keep a single shot for longer than a nanosecond. Watching Top Gear would almost always leave me with a headache from this constant flickering between angles. What is the point of crafting all these wonderful images of beautiful cars if you don't give the viewer the chance to enjoy them?

And then there are the challenges. I think we have done them all now and it's starting to get fucking boring. Plus, the presenters are all cocks in one way or another, so we don't really care who wins and we'd be happy to see them all fucking lose.

It says a lot when someone on PistonHeads, PISTONHEADS for fuck's sake, says that the best part of the show was when James fucking May reviewed a fucking Dacia fucking Sandero. It is such that the best part of the show for me was watching Eric Bana drive a fucking Suzuki Liana. I.e., not a fucking supercar and not one of the regular cocks on the show.

I realise it's "entertainment" and not a serious car show, but really, fucking entertain us then. The scripts are shite, the ideas are weak, the "gags" are insultingly moronic and the presenters are doing this all in their sleep.

Really, this is absolutely shite. And Fifth Gear is just as pointless and tepid.

It would have had to be a big tree

Believe you me, you thieving sacks of shit, Sir Christopher Kelly's recommendations are far more lenient than those that I would have levied: mine would have made the Star Chamber look like fucking Alton Towers, and would probably have involved cutting your salaries by 75%, banning all expenses, shoving sharpened cockroaches up your pissholes, putting half of you in prison and hanging the other half from the nearest tree.

Hear bloody hear!

Life in graphs -- an occasional series: Part 6

Twatstorm in a twatcup

Perhaps you remember a while ago, a bunch of Labour polesmokers managed to get a hashtag to make it to the top of the twatter charts: #WeLoveTheNHS.

Well, today, we have #SaySorryBrown hitting the dizzy heights ... and for some reason, all the red cocksuckers are quiet.

Brown like that

Tip of the clown wig to Bella.

Is it just me?

I watched the suave, urbane Lord Mandelsnake of Fondlebum of Boy delivering his rather fumbling attack on the Bullingdon Boys.

And I wondered if there was any self-awareness on the part of this highly-educated, polished, entitled member of the political classes. Here is someone who is, to all intents and purposes, a member of something even more iniquitous than hereditary nobility, a fucking weapons-grade sleazebag who clearly knows where all the bodies are buried, but all concealed an impeccable facade of unctuous manners and breeding. He is the son and grandson of nobility within the political class, to all intents entirely uindistinguishable* from a Bullingdon Boy.

And yet he has the astonishing temerity to bang on about other members of the political class, just because their ties are blue, rather than red.

It's all just a little game to these overly-entitled fucks, isn't it?

*Oops.

Life in graphs -- an occasional series: Part 5

Cock gobbling fuck farts

Is there any fucking thing worse than being dragged out of bed by a chirpy relative who doesn't realise that NORMAL FUCKING PEOPLE SLEEP IN ON A FUCKING SATURDAY MORNING?

God bless B3ta!

Teh Funneh!

Update: From Mitch in the comments:

The Horror!!!

Now the racists and rapists
And open prison escapists
Were just passing by.

And the grabby types,
The Maddie types,
Who want to be a Daddy types
Were just passing by.

And the mug-you types,
And thug-you types
And like to have sex by drug-you types
Were just passing by.

Those on their own,
Fucking the phone
With squinty eyes looking like a clone
Were just passing by.

Trucker driving through
Who just got blew
And killed a hooker on the A32
Was just passing by.

And the IT bod
Sat in his pod
Choking on his tongue and writing his blog
Was just passing by.*

And the jobless types,
Who are not white
And used to pick cotton and fingers are light
Were just passing by.

And the sick perverts,
Who disconcert
The women with outrageous flirts
And like to fill their mouths with squirts
Were just passing by.

The Sickipedia folk,
Who share a joke;
See a duplicate and almost choke.
Waiting ages for Elton's stroke
Were just passing by.

There's a McDonalds for everyone.

*Nuffink to do wiv me, guv!

Life in graphs -- an occasional series: Part 4

Dear ActOnCO2

I've just caught your latest snappy advert suggesting that I drive five miles less every week.

Well: fuck you.

Just for that, I will make sure that I drive an extra five miles in each of my collection of cars every fucking day.

You arrogant, LYING motherfuckers.

Suck my fucking balls.

So, what's been happening then?

I've been out in the fucking sticks, I've had no broadband, I can't get news sites, I can't face the idiot lantern or the radio, what is going on? From what little I can see, it looks like "fuck all".

On the road again ... again ... a-fucking-gain!

I don't think I could be a cabbie somehow.

Had to deliver a presentation to a new customer today

... and I got the dreaded "post-lunch" slot. So to see if anyone was awake, I was talking about how our products work on the upcoming Ubuntu release called "Crafty Butcher".

They were all asleep with their eyes open, definitely.

Life in graphs -- an occasional series: Part 3

Curious

I wonder how it must feel for Labour-ites, used to sweeping all before them, to see both Banana Boy and the Grinning Gobslotfucker both fail at getting plum Euro posts.

And Bliar must especially be chafing at the thought that someone called Rumpy-Pumpy is more popular than he is.

The murderous fuckwit.

Another crap day

I'd been hoping to make it to the "Informix Community Event", but a customer emergency has stopped that from happening.

Arse biscuits.

Life in graphs -- an occasional series: Part 2

Instant? Sure!

Justice? Not so much:

The top prosecutor has demanded an end to the use of police cautions to deal with thousands of serious assaults every year amid concern that the justice system is failing to rein in violent offenders.

Keir Starmer, QC, the Director of Public Prosecutions, is seeking a review of so-called “instant justice”, with up to 40,000 assults each year now dealt with by on-the-spot cautions.

These include a 15-year-old boy who was cautioned for rape and a man who was cautioned for smashing a beer glass into a landlady’s face at a pub

You might feel that a caution for rape is a ludicrously trivial penalty. I couldn't possibly comment.

Other bloggers also offer insight

Charlotte Gore continues to be the Sam Fox of the libertarian blogosphere with an erudite post about the state of the Labour Party's finances and how it's a model for what they're doing to the country as a whole.

She's followed this up with an interesting exposure of the BNP by guest blogger Matt Wardman: in essence, Griffin absolutely controls the whole thing, it's his own personal fiefdom and any suggestion that he needs to consult or persuade anybody is just a fig leaf.

Both well worth a read.

Charlotte Gore, earlier

The good news just keeps streaming in!

Cunts:

Yesterday, we learned about a mother who was branded an abuser and followed home by police and questioned, after she threatened to smack her child for being naughty.

Now these communists want to send inspectors into our homes to ensure that we've installed smoke alarms properly.

These intrusive measures are coming thick and fast - sometimes several per day. How much damage will this unspeakably vile 'government' do before it is kicked out of office in March 2010?

I don't even want to think about the answer to that. Life in the UK is so surreal at the moment, every time you think it can't get worse, it promptly does.

Customer "face time" today

So blogging may be erratic.

And what a bloody customer as well. Demanding as fuck!

Life in graphs -- an occasional series: Part 1

The Sun was bang out of order to spy on Gordon Brown ...

... according to some pundits. Meanwhile, on planet Earth:

It made me laugh

Handwriting

Just a thought, but if the monocular mentalist's handwriting is that bad, it might explain all the shit laws we've been impaled upon over the last twelve years. All the clerks dicking around trying to work out what the fuck he had written get to three in the morning and then just say: "Ah fuck it - let's just make any old shit up, he never reads it anyway!"

Once again ...

... I appear to be at odds with the rest of the blogosphere.

Now, it is true that the Gorgon is blind and hand writing is a very difficult process for him. And that makes his determination to hand write a letter admirable. He could so easily have had someone type up something and then just sign it. Or rubber stamp it, as they did in the old days.

But we have an entire apparatus of government that sits at his side. Could nobody have checked the fucking thing before sending it out? This is a letter of personal condolence, for fuck's sake. Did people think that just because it's from a blind cunt of a Prime Mentalist that it would excuse all the mistakes and crossings-out?

Instead of making the effort to check the fucking letter, he just bashes it off and sends it out. So the woman who receives it (who has just lost her son, remember) is rightly insulted by the cack-handed effort and does something that I find incomprehensible, but then this is modern Britain.

So now the fat fuck is on the front page over an entirely avoidable issue. And he calls her to apologise, whereupon he promptly proceeds to treat this raging woman (who has just lost her son, remember) like he treats his mates in the Commons. Firstly, he tries to shift the blame to the opposition:

My writing is maybe so badly (speech muffled) that you can't read it.

So, it's not entirely his fault, the silly moo couldn't read it, that's all.

Instead of sucking up the punishment, he then proceeds to tell her that she's wrong in the trivial matter of how many mistakes he made. Really. The man is so dysfunctional that he thinks he can browbeat an angry, grieving mother over a number, like she's Nick Clegg, stumbling over PMQs.

And then, for me, the money shot:

I've got the letter in front of me and if you feel that my writing was not right then I'm sorry about that.

Let's just look at all the ways that this is wrong:

• he apologises, not for the fuckups he made, but for the implication that she feels he shouldn't have written to her at all
• it's not directly related to the problem, it's the usual Brownian motion to deflect criticism by turning it into an implication of failure or spite by the person having a go at him
• he doesn't accept that she has any reason to be angry

It's his standard technique from PMQs. I'm surprised he didn't add something like "I won't take any lessons from someone who supported the illegal adventure in the Falklands".

And what staggers me is that nobody prepared him adequately for the phone call. They must have known or feared that she would tape it, surely? That is an astonishing display of hubris.

What little sympathy I have for Brown's medical condition is completely overshadowed by the fact that this is still our Prime Minister, at the head of a massive, bloated government. Is there no-one useful who can help him stop a disaster from turning into a catastrophe?

Update: Turns out CF is on my side and raises an interesting point:

... perhaps there's such a culture of fear and bullying in the bunker that no-one dared say anything, for fear of spending the rest of the day in A&E having fragments of a Nokia phone picked out of their skulls.

Update 2: I'm indebted to the Ambush Predator for bringing this slant to the story to my attention:

The evidence here is not the letter, but the story itself. That we can think/care about how our leader spells is proof enough that we need him out, a general election called, and a man capable of great oratory and gravitas appointed in his place.

(Although I am minded to point out that Hitler met those requirements as well.)

Update 3: John Miller points out in the comments that Gorgon had a copy of the letter when he phoned. So he or someone else photocopied it. You can't even pretend that he wrote it and bashed it into the envelope in a moment of human exhaustion or anything. The letter was handled before it was posted. Somebody could (and more importantly should) have stopped this all from happening.

I don't entirely agree with Oxford Spring. To me, this story is about monstrous incompetence around a small but important matter. It's not that Gordon is just a bloke on a walk - he's an arrogant fool let out without a leash. He's so used to bullying the simpering fucks around him that he's completely forgotten that there are people out there who won't put up with his shit just because he's a nasty, manipulative, duplicitous back-stabber.

That woman is currently in a place where it doesn't matter if you're the Prime Minister. In fact, she could reasonably blame him for the death of her son because he is spending money that should have paid for better equipment for her son, on dole bludgers and MP expenses instead. So instead of taking the punch and rolling with it, he chose to bicker with her.

All it would have taken for this to go away would be for him to have said: "I'd like to start by saying that I'm terribly sorry for sending that letter to you as it stood and I'm sorry that it didn't achieve the aim of expressing my sincere sympathies with you for your loss. I wanted to convey my respects and condolences in person and I hope that you can forgive me."

Even I wouldn't be able to fight that.

But no. He can't admit that he, James Gordon Brown, fucked up. Even his most recent apology (at today's press conference, I believe) was not an apology:

To all other families whom I have written to, I can only apologise if my handwriting is difficult to read.

Once again, he's trying to imply that it's all the silly moo's fault for not being able to read his handwriting.

Nuffink to do wiv me, guv!

Update 4: Once again, I find myself nodding in agreement with something CF says.