Give him your support!

Via Timmy, this:

I just got off the phone with some of the people who are occupying Nottingham University over the crisis in Gaza. There has been an effort to turf them out, with the power turned off (they got it back on after a while), and a couple of suits representing the Vice Chancellor visiting the occupation to threaten the students with disciplinary action. It is not entirely clear at the moment what the university can do, but given that other occupations have registered some success so far, one would hope for the students to prevail. 'Pete' explained to me what the students would like people to do:

"We have a petition that we are producing which we would like people to sign, so they should check the website for this. We would appreciate messages of support, especially if people could send them to us [occupationnottingham@gmail.com] and the Vice Chancellor [david.greenaway@nottingham.ac.uk] at the same time

So, I figured it might be amusing to send a message of support to the Vice Chancellor of the Uni instead, copying in the cunts doing the occupying. Here is my humble effort:

Sir,

I believe a bunch of posturing idiots have occupied university property in some kind of deranged attempt to attract attention to the Gaza crisis, because, of course, it hasn't dominated the news sufficiently.

Well, I'd like to say that as a taxpayer, I hope you will sling these pompous, overweening fuckwits out on the street as soon as possible. Failing which, if you would care to place them in stocks on the front steps so that we can all come round and throw rotten fruit, eggs and jagged boulders at them for wasting our money, not only on the subsidies we give them, but on the subsidies we give to people who want to study but now cannot.

Since I'm sure that in this limp-wristed age of pandering to the idiotic there will be no such option available to you, I can only offer my fervent hope that all these cunts simultaneously contract face cancer and die lingering deaths.

Yours, etc.

I urge you to offer your support to him too! :o)

Holy FUCK!

I swear to God, I am not making this up:

Chris Cowin has won our first "commenter of the week" prize (a bottle of House of Commons champagne) for this insightful metaphor. Well done, Chris!

"Gordon Brown can be compared to the driver of a bus which has been travelling a rough and bumpy road. On taking the wheel, he promises the passengers that from now on the road will be smooth and there will be no more "Boom and Bust". He drives carefully along a fine new highway and all is well. But then a storm breaks out and the bus is buffeted from side to side. The passenger s at the back complain loudly that they were misled, that it is just as uncomfortable as before - but Gordon must not waste time arguing with them. He has to concentrate on driving the bus."

This is apparently so fucking good that it merits a bottle of Pol Roger from Labour Party coffers.

Update: the source of this appalling Brown-nosing.

Remember, remember, ...

... the 15th of June:

The government has unveiled plans for a private company to run a "superdatabase" that will track all our emails, calls, texts, internet use and so on. This is an immense infringement of civil liberties, not to mention a major risk to our private data - but it won't make us any safer. The sheer amount of information that the Government intends to collect will be impossible to analyse properly and will undoubtedly turn up false positives while missing potential security threats amongst the morass of spam emails and private chat.

So, for one day (15 June 2009), we should send a message to the Home Office - "you want to see our emails? Ok then, here they are then!".

We do this by simply cc'ing or bcc'ing every email we send (and if you like, forwarding every email you receive), regardless of importance or content, to public.enquiries@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk.

I hope they like emails about Viagra ...

Pity they didn't knife her ...

Useless cunts:

Our Jacqui visited pupils at a school in Wythenshawe, and: "Together they discussed how identity cards will help young people strike out on their own by opening their first bank account, renting their first flat, or perhaps travelling to Europe for the first time." The lovely Home Secretary and the shell-suited scrotes of southern Manchester - a heartwarming image for a Friday morning.

Jesus fucking Christ, I did ALL those fucking things and I didn't need an ID card for any of it, you mendacious fucking whore.

British jobs for British workers

Hah! I didn't this one coming:

Demand for outsourcing has fallen as global economic troubles hit the outsourcing industry

So, while Brit energy workers are less cost-effective than the Italians (I ask you! The Italians!) at least we won't be losing so many call-centres to India.

"Good," you might think ...

... upon reading these words:

Restaurant bomber jailed for life

But actually:

A Muslim convert who injured himself in a failed suicide attack in an Exeter restaurant has been jailed for life with a minimum of 18 years.

12 years with good behaviour?

Life: it's not just for Christmas, you useless cunts!

A different application paradigm is needed

Good stuff here, railing against browser-based applications:

Web development is popular because it's fast, versatile, and relatively inexpensive -- and it's certainly easy to find developers. But that doesn't mean the alternatives don't have advantages of their own, and in some cases the Web's weaknesses might outweigh its strengths. In the interest of healthy debate, here are five reasons why concentrating your development efforts on browser-based apps might not be the best idea.

1. It's client-server all over again.
Web applications encourage a thin-client approach: the client handles UI rendering and user input, while the real processing happens on servers. What sense does that make when any modern laptop packs enough CPU and GPU power to put yesterday's Cray supercomputer to shame?

Concentrating computing power in the datacenter is fine if you're a Google or a Microsoft, but that approach puts a lot of pressure on smaller players. Scaling small server farms to meet demand can be a real challenge -- just ask Twitter.

Furthermore, security vulnerabilities abound in networked applications, and the complexity of the browser itself seemingly makes bugs inevitable. Why saddle your apps with that much baggage?

2. Web UIs are a mess.
The Web's stateless, mainly forms-based UI approach is reliable, but it's not necessarily the right model for every application. Why sacrifice the full range of real-time interactivity offered by traditional, OS-based apps? Technologies such as AJAX only simulate in the browser what systems programming could do already.

And while systems programmers are accustomed to building apps with consistent UI toolkits such as the Windows APIs, Apple's Cocoa, or Nokia's Qt, building a Web UI is too often an exercise in reinventing the wheel. Buttons, controls, and widgets vary from app to app. Sometimes the menus are along the top, other times they're off to the side. Sometimes they pop down when you roll over them, and sometimes you have to click. That inconsistency hurts your development budget, but it hurts usability more.

3. Browser technologies are too limiting.
Why give up the full range of languages, tools, and methodologies that systems programming has to offer? JavaScript has evolved into a respectable general-purpose language, but it can hardly be expected to be all things to all people. User interface code written in such languages as C++, Objective C, or Python can often be both more efficient and more maintainable than code written for the Web paradigm.

What's more, HTML and CSS are clearly deficient when it comes to rich interactivity. Witness the proliferation of multimedia plug-ins such as Flash, QuickTime, and Silverlight. Relying on these outside dependencies increases the complexity and support cost of your applications. Why bother? These tricks wouldn't be necessary if you weren't trying to shoehorn interactivity into the browser instead of sticking to the desktop.

4. The big vendors call the shots.
Recently, Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz described the browser as "hostile territory" for independent developers. It's a world divided between giants, he said, with Microsoft's Internet Explorer on one side and Google's stake in Chrome and Firefox on the other.

Schwartz's statements may be self-serving, but he does have a point. Increasingly, the evolution of Web standards is being driven by major browser vendors -- new features are implemented first and standardized later. Independent developers have little genuine input into the future direction of the Web. And that's to say nothing of the ongoing bickering between the various vendors. Does it make sense to rely on client-side software that's such a moving target?

5. Should every employee have a browser?
At one point, a computer on an employee's desk was for work. [Ed: Oh, the irony!] Today, every Web-enabled PC is a gateway to shopping, TV and movies, games, music, online chat, and countless other diversions -- up to and including more illicit activities, including porn and copyright infringement -- to say nothing of making them vulnerable to phishing and malware attacks.

I've been saying this since the first cunt came along with a browser-based app.

Can we please go back to green screen applications now?

"Killing innocent people is OK", says Dave Spart

For my part, I lined up with that section of the Labour left, headed by Ken Livingstone, which cultivated ties with Sinn Fein. While we hedged our support for ‘the armed struggle’ in ‘the six county statelet’ with this or that qualification, nobody in principle doubted that the IRA had some sort of moral right to utilise ‘the armalite’ as well as the ballot box against the British army.

Reconsidering the question nearly 30 years on, I still understand the logic of that position.

No wonder the left lionizes Guevara and Stalin and Mao, while denouncing Hitler. People can and should die because of socialism. It's only when they die because of fascism (is there a difference?) that it's bad.

Update: Doh!

Yet another quiz

My Political Views
I am a far-right social libertarian
Right: 8.21, Libertarian: 6.7

Political Spectrum Quiz


My Foreign Policy Views
Score: -1.09

Political Spectrum Quiz


This surprised me, I thought I'd be less interventionist.

My Culture War Stance
Score: -1.93

Political Spectrum Quiz

Fuck the NSPCC

Over at Bishop Hill, I see my least favourite charidee is getting a bit of a kicking:

The organisation's head of policy, one Diana Sutton, is quoted as saying

We welcome the Government’s decision to review the guidance on home education. We believe the existing legislation and guidance on elective home education is outdated. We support the view set out by the London (LA) Children’s Safeguarding Leads network that the government should review the legislation to balance the parents’ rights to home educate their children, the local authorities’ duty to safeguard children and the child’s right to protection. We welcome the fact that this review will look at where local authorities have concerns about the safety and welfare, or education, of a home educated child and what systems are in place to deal with those concerns.

I don't think there can be any doubt where they think the balance lies. In the realm of home education the NSPCC's aims cannot be met without crushing a fundamental civil liberty -- that of being left alone to bring children up how one wishes. They cannot become involved with this kind of decision without becoming overtly political and becoming a threat to our freedoms. In fact, the aims of the NSPCC are probably wholly incompatible with civil liberties.

Unfortunately, I think the Bish is being a bit too Christian with these cunts. They are so deeply entrenched in the managerialist government of this country that they are doing their very best to promote the statist agenda. They are not accidentally helping trample our civil liberties, they are and have been for ages now, part of the government's divide and conquer, "won't someone think of the children" salami-slicing of our rights.

The next time they send you a prepaid postage envelope for one of their tear-jerking campaigns, I suggest you stuff it as full as you can of bits of scrap metal or scrap paper and send it back to them. Make it as heavy as you can. Engage them in wasteful correspondence, like filling in the supplied forms with made up details that look plausible but are total nonsense. They're trying to fuck up our lives using our own money. They're not interested in the welfare of children. They're interested in the use (or abuse) of children as a means to control everybody.

Fuck them.

Another blogger in the shit

Dave's Part, consistently the only left-wing (and he is very left-wing) blogger with anything interesting to say, is being sued by a Tory activist.

This is the same Tory activist who is suing Recess Monkey. Unlike Alex Hilton, Dave seems to be going it alone, not begging and pleading for help and he also seems to have a firm grip on the fundamentals of the law for his case.

Perversely, this makes me much more predisposed to be sympathetic to his cause, because he's being a man and not a snivelling bitch. But I do think he's being brave, because even Private Eye settled out of court, and they have a fair bit of experience with libel cases.

Good luck, Mr Spart! Oh, and if you do read, this, please put an RSS feed on your blog so that I can link to it!

Environ-mentalism strikes in F1

Hah!

The introduction of KERS - Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems - into Formula 1 has not been without mishap. There was a battery fire at Red Bull, and a BMW engineer received a nasty electric shock during a test at the Jerez circuit in Spain.

Now F1 safety supremo Charlie Whiting has announced that track marshals will be issued with gloves that will be “good for 1000 volts” and that cars will be fitted with warning lights so that anyone approaching a stricken F1 racer will be able to see if the KERS has shorted out.

Presumably the subtle odour of frying driver will be another give away.

KERS components will also be clearly colour coded so anyone finding them lying by the side of the track will know what they are about to pick up.

In an interview with F1.com, Whiting goes on to say that a KERS Safety Working Group has been set up, chaired by BMW.

“They‘ve met quite a few time,” he said, “and they’ve come up with a long list of suggestions, parts of which have already become regulations, and some of which will form the basis of a comprehensive document we’ll circulate to all circuits and tracks hosting a grand prix.”

No matter how comprehensive the document, the lingering fear of a massive electric shock is hardly likely to encourage marshals to race to the aid of drivers who have just had a major shunt. After all, just how sure would you be that a 150mph impact hasn't also put the kibosh on the KERS warning lamp?

Of course, none of this worries the lads at Williams F1 as they alone seem to have opted for a flywheel-based system. All they now have to worry about is a kinetic storage device rotating at an unimaginably high rotational velocity ripping loose and flying off into the wide blue yonder like a frisbee from hell.

Never mind chaps, I'm sure Gaia will be grateful for your sacrifices!

Spot the odd one out!

And:



Bin the fucking BBC, it's useless!

The science is not settled...

... hell, it's not even comprehensible!

Rug muncher to run Iceland?

Well, given the number of hotties in the country, I can't really blame her:

Icelandic politician may become world's first lesbian Prime Minister.

It's all pretty textbook stuff:

It is reported that Social Affairs Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir will be named as interim Prime Minister.

If chosen Ms Sigurdardottir, 66, will become the first openly gay or lesbian person to become a head of government.

She has been an MP since 1978 and was recently voted the most popular politician in Iceland.

Blah, blah, blah:

Ms Gisladottir, 54, the country's foreign minister, has been critical of the Prime Minister's response to the financial crisis.

A former Mayor of Reykjavík, she has led her party since 2005.

Yadda yadda yadda. But then there's this:

She had brain surgery last week.

HUH?

Tip of the wig to Gweeds.

Obama's Fisting Stimulus

(Am I still allowed to say that? It doesn't arouse me.)

Anyway:

You won't believe what's in that stimulus bill.

They're not kidding, folks:

only $90 billion out of $825 billion, or about 12 cents of every $1, is for something that can plausibly be considered a growth stimulus. And even many of these projects aren't likely to help the economy immediately

Still, at least he's not Bush, eh?

Change and hope, my friends, change and hope!

Vanilla or not?

Apparently, my tastes are rather humdrum and conventional. "Extreme" stuff is much more likely to make my eyes water or just go "ewww". But if you like that kind of thing, you need to be aware that "consenting adults" has gone out the window, and you can now be charged with having "extreme porn".

If you want to get rid of anything, there is some advice here.

PS ccleaner is also good for speeding up computers with crap in the registry, so even if you don't have any dodgy stuff on your computer, it's worth running. ;o)

Pity it wasn't Ken

The agency notes "at least one report of a fatal episode when an individual swallowed a California newt", but does not elaborate on how this unfortunate incident occurred.

Oh well, maybe next time.

Meet the new Rozzer ...

... same as the old one:

The new Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police promised a break from the tenure of his predecessor Sir Ian Blair as he was unveiled as Britain's top police officer today.

Sir Paul Stephenson, flanked by Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, and Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, on the steps of Scotland Yard, declared that he would take a new approach to the country’s most senior policing job.

"Ian Blair did it his way. I was a loyal deputy. Now I am going to do it my way," he said.

Sir Paul, who has been Acting Commissioner since Sir Ian was forced to resign last October, was the agreed choice of both Ms Smith and Mr Johnson, who met on Monday to conclude the two-month appointment process.


In clinching the appointment, he pipped Sir Hugh Orde, the Chief Constable of Northern Ireland, to the £254,000-a-year post.

Telling reporters that he was "hugely proud" to be given the job and wanted to be "intolerant of violence, no matter where that violence comes from", he said: "My agenda for the coming years is straightforward. It is about solving crime, securing our streets, convincing all our communities that we are on their side and delivering the policing they want and being intolerant of violence in any form."

How about the violence of state-sanctioned theft of our money? Oh right, every kind of violence apart from that one.

The signal that Sir Paul would follow a new direction in leading the Met will particularly appeal to Mr Johnson who forced Sir Ian out of his job last October. During his era as chief, the force was widely pilloried by some, with Scotland Yard appearing to lurch from one crisis to the next.

He really covered himself in glory with the Damian Green thing, didn't he? Managed to get Teflon shoulders and leave some other cunt carrying the can. Expect some serious briefing from "friends of Bob Quick" in the future.

Ms Smith and Mr Johnson were anxious to emphasise that they had been unanimous in agreeing on the new Commissioner's appointment.

"Sir Paul offers the expertise and the leadership needed to inspire confidence across the entire police service and most importantly amongst the people of London," the Home Secretary said.

No he fucking doesn't. He's a corrupt remnant of Blair's time.

Mr Johnson added: "I want to plant my flag very firmly in Jacqui Smith’s remarks and stress this was a matter of almost glutinous cross-party consensus."

Fuck off, Boris. You're either a fool for believing that, a fool for being conned into this, or you've got some kind of schlenter going on which is not in this country's best interests.

Sir Paul has effectively been running the Met, the country’s biggest force, since Sir Ian was ousted. During his tenure, big operations against youth crime have cut the level of stabbings and teenage murders.

However, his period as Acting Commissioner was marred by the arrest by Scotland Yard anti-terrorist officers of Damian Green, the Conservative frontbencher, and the search of the MP’s House of Commons office during an inquiry into Home Office leaks.

The fallout from the operation - for which it emerged police did not have the correct documentation - was so catastrophic, that Sir Paul considered withdrawing his application and conceded privately that he had been damaged by the affair.

The affair led to Sir Paul clashing with Mr Johnson for intervening in a continuing police operation after the London Mayor suggested that the investigation into Mr Green would not come to anything.

How unlikely is it that Jacqui Smith is rewarding him for that little episode, eh? Quick took the blame, gold handshakes all round, and Paul has his arse firmly in the driving seat. Smart politics, pity we wanted a policeman.

Sir Paul left the post of Chief Constable of Lancashire to become Sir Ian’s deputy in 2005 and has established himself as a vital cog in ensuring that the Met runs relatively smoothly despite its well-publicised troubles.

The Met faces a series of major challenges. The terrorism threat has waned but preparations for the security operation at the London 2012 Olympics are lagging behind schedule amid wrangling over budgets.

Organised crime is a threat - especially drugs, arms and people-trafficking - but one that politicians have paid less attention to because of a concentration on neighbourhood policing. The Met will also have to brace itself for a potential rise in burglary and street robbery as the recession bites.

Sure. Because the middle classes are all going to turn into feral scrotes, aren't they?

Immediate reaction to his appointment was mixed this morning. The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), along with the former London Mayor, Ken Livingstone, welcomed the move.

Anything Ken likes is a bad thing. So that's another strike.

“He brings a wealth of professionalism and experience in UK policing into this challenging role," Ken Jones, the Acpo president, said. “The business of policing our capital, protecting Londoners and leading the Met is in good hands."

More egregious mutual masturbation from the head of a private company that is also a quango sucking up your tax money. Fuck off, you unelected thief.

However, Brian Paddick, an ex-assistant commissioner and Liberal Democrat mayoral candidate, said the necessary reform of the police service would "take a backseat" under Sir Paul.

"I think he is more likely to work with the predominant macho male culture than Sir Ian Blair was and therefore he will be more popular with the ground floor but not necessarily for the right reasons," he said.

Oooh! Bitchy!

It's all about road safety

One of the things that police cunts always say when you bitch about the fatuous automated revenue collectors is that they free up police resources to deal with real problems.

And yet:

The government had raised huge sums through fines, he added, and yet, at the same time, the number of traffic officers on duty had fallen by 20%.

So actual useful cops who can make intelligent judgments (sometimes!) are being removed from the streets entirely, not being freed up to do more useful things. More lies from the police and the government, more genuine bad driving being ignored in favour of taxing people for no reason.

The only good kind of speed camera, earlier

The Gorgon's "jaw thing"

I guess everyone has wondered WTF that thing is that the Gorgon does with his jaw. It's finally become clear to me: he's making the sound that a headless chicken makes.

How law is made, part 94

Yesterday I was unable to cross examine the Secretary of State who announced the policy towards the motor industry, as he was in the Lords. More importantly, I was unable to cross examine the architects of the policy, as they were in Brussels.

John "The Vulcan" Redwood, sums up the state of British lawmaking with impressive pith.

Quote of the femto-second

It really is so dishonest, so party political and so contrary to the responsibilities of the government for the UK as a whole that I can only hope it backfires.

On the money as usual.

From one fat cunt to another...

This bloke doesn't write often, but when he does, it's really good.

Give him a read.

Rural drivers ...

... are cunts.

That is all.

Who wants to live forever?

It sounds kind of cool:

Jellyfish usually die after propagating but Turritopsis reverts to a sexually immature stage after reaching adulthood and is capable of rejuvenating itself.

So, once you've had a shag, you go back to being a pubescent teen again.

Niiice!

Informix Roundup: 26 Jan 2009

New feature writeup.

UK Informix boot camp in April.

JDBC basics.

Ex-Informixer gets a name check.

4GL job in Bahrain. I like Bahrain, it's seedy and corrupt. :o)

Data Test Analyst job.

We really ARE so fucked

Completely plagiarised from Raedwald:

Have you paid a parking fine recently? Got three points on your licence? Been formally warned by the council for your bin protruding on the footway? (yep, I have had the £1,000 fine threat on the last one) Been suspended from your Sunday football league for rough tackling? (yes, seriously) Congratulations! Your records could soon be added to a pan-European database of subversives. This EU Council decision of 20th January on the establishment of a pan-EU 'criminal' database includes the following 'offences' :-

• Offences related to waste
• Unintentional environmental offences
• Insult of the State, Nation or State symbols
• Insult or resistance to a representative of public authority
• Public order offences, breach of the public peace
• Revealing a secret or breaching an obligation of secrecy
• Unintentional damage or destruction of property
• Offences against migration law - an "Open category" (offences undefined thus all encompassing)
• Offences against military obligations - an "Open category" (offences undefined thus all encompassing)
• Unauthorised entry or residence
• Other offences an "Open category" (offences undefined thus all encompassing)
• Other unintentional offences
• Prohibition from frequenting some places
• Prohibition from entry to a mass event
• Placement under electronic surveillance ("fixed or mobile" - eg: home, car, mobile phone etc)
• Withdrawal of a hunting / fishing license
• Prohibition to play certain games/sports
• Prohibition from national territory
• Personal obligation - an "Open category" (offences undefined thus all encompassing)
• "Fine" - all fines. inc minor non-criminal offences

All those of us who have ever accidentally spilled a cupful of diesel in the water when refuelling, dropped a piece of litter or called the EU circle of stars a fascist and totalitarian symbol are now, officially, criminals. Welcome to the club.

We really are completely and utterly fucked.

Update: Via the Islander, these:





Fuck off, you cunts!

In your face evidence of man made global warming

As the temperature keeps rising relentlessly, I am constantly baffled by things like this:

Snow has fallen over the United Arab Emirates for the first time ever, leaving a white blanket over the mountains of Ras al-Khaimah as the desert country experienced a cold spell and above-average rainfall.

See, now I just don't understand this. I feel colder this winter than I have for a couple of years. It's snowing where it's never snowed before. And yet, it's getting hotter?

Still, at least Greenland is still melting like a bastard:

So much for Greenland ice’s Armageddon. “It has come to an end,” glaciologist Tavi Murray of Swansea University in the United Kingdom said during a session at the meeting. “There seems to have been a synchronous switch-off” of the speed-up, she said. Nearly everywhere around south east Greenland, outlet glacier flows have returned to the levels of 2000.

We're all doomed, I tells ya. Doomed!

Cunts.

Encomia Obamamania

Fuck, I really can't believe the free ride this cunt is getting:

But there is more to Michelle Obama than that – much, much more. On January 9, almost unnoticed, Mrs Obama resigned her position as an executive at the University of Chicago Medical Centre. But the high-powered personality has not gone away.

I see they airbrushed out the bit where she got a $180,000 per annum pay increase after Obamalamadingdong arranged a $1.5M allocation of state funds to the hospital where she worked.

Remember Tony and Cherie Blair?

Ding-ding! Seconds out, round two!

Update: Oh God:

But in her first interview as First Lady on Wednesday, Mrs Obama said that she was excited about her new life "because I think there's a lot that can be done with this platform". She plans to take a lead on issues relating to military families and work-life balance for women. Her policy director, Jocelyn Frye, worked for a charity that championed equality at work.

Platform? Fuck off already, you unelected, overweening bitch. What the fuck does the wife of the President need a fucking policy director for?

Go forth and multiply!

Yea, verily, the Lord (Mandelsnake of Hartlepool and Foy in the Cunty of Fondlebumshire) spake, saying: "This is the intermong, you have dominion over all of it in the form of tiresome webshites that will attack the Tories and speak only the vaguest of flannel."

And every fucker in the Labour party grabbed a copy of Dolly Draper's new "template" and went forth and procreated over the intermong like a bunch of cunts. And the Lord saw all this and proclaimed himself satisfied.

But it was all shit.

On the money ... again!

The Daily Mash once again speaks far too much common sense to be described as satire:

"How's about this? As an adult, I think a reasonable daily limit is me drinking as much as I fucking want.

"If it affects my work I'll get sacked. If it affects my relationships I'll be all lonely and sad.

"And as for my health, following a quick glance at my tax bill I've decided that the NHS will treat me and the government can keep its fucking opinions to itself."

Hear, fucking hear!

Out for a perve

I may be some time.

Labour lists to port

If that's a blog, I'm Napoleon Bonaparte. I pop in from time to time to see if anyone has actually said anything useful, but it's the usual press-release standard crap or a bunch of banging on about what a useless cunt "Call Me Dave" is or (and this really fucks me off) how wonderful Obamalamadingdong is.

Can I just say something to all the cunts at LabourList: Barry O'Barmy was elected by his party and by his country. Perhaps you could suggest that the maniacal monocular Scottish cunt does the same before you go off on one telling us all how much like Obama the Labour party is.

Cunts.

And that Tom Miller cunt, Jesus, which fucking planet is he on, taking on dizzy in matters of technology? dizzy, for fuck's sake. It's like trying to out-swear Devil's Kitchen or be more shaggable than Trixy. And then writing a paean of praise to Dawn Butler for nabbing Barry's autograph.

In a depressing shallow talent pool, Mr Miller manages to claim stunning new heights of mediocrity and fatuity.

Dolly, put it out of our misery. It's a fucking laughing stock.

Extraordinary doesn't even BEGIN to describe it!

Christ on a three-wheeled cycle:

The most obvious question, of course, is why the hell I should have to pay a brass farthing in compensation for the death of a terrorist.

Having a laugh? Taking the piss? I don't know what the expression is that describes this. I don't think it exists.

Derek Draper: WTF?

Has he been at the magic mushrooms or something?

I was in the middle of chatting to Hazel Blears and, glancing at my mobile had to utter the immortal words, "I'm sorry Hazel, I've got to take this, it's Bruce Forsyth". Little did I know at the time but Hazel is a massive fan of 'Strictly' and a rather good tap dancer. In fact, we ended up going to one of the recent shows with her and her husband and she nearly got up to join Bruce in the warm-up.

That wasn't the most incongruous mobile interruption I've ever had, though. I was once waiting to interview Jade Goody about her emotional struggles for Now magazine, and while waiting was on the phone to Harriet Harman. When Jade arrived I had to say to that great feminist standard bearer, "Sorry Harriet, I'll have to call you back, Jade Goody's here".

Namedropping: the sine qua non of tiresome, worthless and insecure fucktards everywhere.

Look at him, everybody! He's special!

Puerile, I know ...

... but it tickled me, er, pink:

The noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, who I am delighted is now a Member of our House, adds greatly to the gaiety of nations wherever he goes.

Papers, tovarisch, and not the rolling kind...

This is a touch disturbing:

Next week, also in Brussels, a group called The International Coalition Against Prohibition (TICAP) was due to hold a two-day conference under the patronage of Godfrey Bloom MEP (UKIP). The event was called "Smoking Bans and Lies" and the programme was unambiguously partisan.

Venue was the European Parliament building and I understand that several readers of this blog were planning to attend.

Yesterday morning it was reported that the conference had been moved from the Parliament to a hotel near the Parliament building. Last night I was told by Gawain Towler, press officer for UKIP in Brussels, that the original conference hosted by Godfrey Bloom has been cancelled and in its place is a "new" conference with a very similar programme. (Don't ask me why. I'm only the messenger.)

The "new" conference will be called "Thinking Is Forbidden" and officially it will be hosted not by Godfrey Bloom but by the British arm of the Independence/Democracy Group (aka UKIP). Delegates who were due to attend "Smoking Bans and Lies" will be invited to attend "Thinking Is Forbidden" instead.

The reason for this game of musical chairs seems to be related to THIS outrageous letter which was sent, in December, to Hans-Gert Pöttering, president of the European Parliament, by Florence Berteletti Kemp, director of the Smoke Free Partnership (which includes Cancer Research UK).

In her letter, Kemp argues that "this event should not under any circumstances take place on the premises of the European Parliament". She then gives the following reasons:

• "the event appears to be in contravention of Parliament’s own rules of procedure and is detrimental to the dignity of Parliament"

• "the event goes against all of Parliament’s adopted reports and the European Community’s legislation and commitments on this topic"

• "it violates the spirit of the International Framework Convention on Tobacco Control"

There's a lot more of this high-handed nonsense in Kemp's letter and any self-respecting institution would have torn it up and sent her packing. But not the European Parliament. I am told that on on Tuesday 12 January a committee met in camera and decided that permission for the conference to be held within the Parliament building had been withdrawn.

Neither Godfrey Bloom nor anyone else associated with "Smoking Bans and Lies" were told that the conference was on the agenda. In their absence, the committee acted as judge and jury. According to UKIP's Gawain Towler, the organisers only discovered that they were barred from using the Parliament building on Tuesday this week, a full seven days after the meeting.

Is it just me, or is that a bit fucking high-handed, totalitarian, undemocratic and also just a little bit cheeky?

Sherioushly, thish guy needsh your help

Whether or not you agree with his politics, he is being taken to court for having offended Muslims by quoting the Koran at them in a way that makes them look backward and barbaric.

I'm not a big fan of people being prosecuted just for being offensive, because I'll be in a world of pain someday myself. Especially when they're just making other people's beliefs public. I find it particularly appalling that the allegedly tolerant Dutch are doing this (just like I find it appalling how the allegedly tolerant English do equally stupid things.)

So click here and help out a man with a very strange hairdo.

So much for all the new languages

Hah! All you Ajax and PHP and Perl and Ruby kiddies can kiss my arse:

C overwhelmingly proved the most popular programming language for thousands of new open-source projects in 2008, according to license tracker Black Duck Software.

The company, which monitors 180,000 projects on nearly 4,000 sites, said almost half - 47 per cent - of new projects last year used C. Black Duck said 17,000 new open-source projects were created in total. Next in popularity after C came Java, with 28 per cent.

In scripting, JavaScript came top with 20 per cent, followed by Perl on 18 per cent.

PHP attracted just 11 per cent and Ruby six per cent. The numbers are a surprise as open-source PHP has proved popular as a web-site development language, while Ruby's been a hot topic for many.

If you want to do a man's work, you have to use a man's programming language!

Informix Roundup: 21 Jan 2009

Informix tutorials.

ITIL vendor supports Informix.

Something about auditing Informix.

Pan-European Informix Tech Day.

Embedding Informix RedBook.

Sysadmin job in London.

DBA job in London.

Dev team leader job in Leicester.

DBA job in West Mids.

Ex-Informixer gets a namecheck.

Ajax job in Noo Yawk.

Another namecheck. And another.

GIS product supports Informix.

Stonebraker is going places.

Are the police totally out of control?

Huh?

A Conservative MP has alleged that police entered his Commons office without a search warrant demanding to see constituency correspondence.

WTF?

They tried their luck with Damian Green and got away with it. Now they just walk in and demand shit without even bothering to get a warrant.

But it's OK, I'm just paranoid. It's never a police state.

PMQs: your handy cut out and keep guide

Every week, the Prime Mentalist faces questions from the rest of Westmonster. Rather than endure the tedium of the event for yourself, allow me to knock up a quick summary of how it goes every week:

1. The man with the forehead asks a blindingly obvious question. The Prime Mentalist ignores the question, because acknowledging the simple truth would make him look bad and stutters and waffles on in circles until he can think of a way of blaming the man with the forehead for something vaguely related.

2. This repeats for a number of iterations.

3. Then rank and file politicians get to ask questions of the Prime Mentalist. If they are from Labour back-benchers, they are soft, cuddly questions that fellate the Prime Mentalist gently, if they are from the opposition then the Prime Mentalist stutters and waffles on in circles until he can think of a way of blaming the leader of the relevant party for something vaguely related.

4. All the politicians look jolly pleased with themselves, as well they might do in their lovely cocooned lives.

What a load of cock. Fuck them all, they're all self-serving cunts.

Denis MacShane: cunt

What a fucking tosser:

The ever-creative Denis MacShane, the Labour former foreign minister, has just put out a press release claiming that this amounts to a Tory snub to the new leader of the free world.

I was saddened to leave Mr Obama's world historic speech in order to feed Conservative isolationism by voting in a division on a vote to take note of European Union policy on the financial crisis. There was no decision impacting on UK law or government decisions but the Tories are so obsessed against Europe they called a division just after Mr Obama had begin his speech. I hope our friends in America take note that David Cameron would rather have UK legislators voting symbolically against Europe rather than listening to President Obama's historic speech.

So you'd rather fucking watch telly than do the job taxpayers pay you for? And you have the gall to announce this to the UK public as well?

You are a fucking workshy thieving cunt, you are. If you don't want the job, fucking resign, you utter waste of public funds.

How cool is that?***

You may or may not know that I am the world's biggest fan of Lotus Notes* -- the world's most efficient and bestest email client. I am also the world's biggest fan of SAP** -- the world's most efficient and bestest business software. So imagine my delight when I read this:

IBM kicked off its annual Lotusphere event dedicated to its Lotus Notes and Domino groupware and collaboration environment this weekend, having already launched Notes and Domino 8.5 at the recent Macworld.

First up at the Orlando, Florida, event was a peanut butter-and-chocolate combination of the Notes and Domino groupware software from IBM with mySAP Business Suite, SAP's flagship business-applications suite.

IBM said the resulting code, called Alloy, is the first jointly developed program created by the two companies.

Rather than use the application screens that come by default with Business Suite, the Alloy add-on deploys the SAP screens inside of Lotus Notes and makes use of the collaboration features in Domino. That means, for instance, executives don't have to learn two systems - one for getting data about the business and one for collaborating with employees.

Domino, being an application development and runtime environment in its own right, has its own workflow software, but Alloy makes use of workflow, reporting, and analytic modules inside Business Suite, which can then be customized with Notes and Domino or the SAP development tools.

All I can say to this is "w00t!".

* This might be a lie.
** This too.
*** Not at fucking all.

Free with every copy of the Daily Mirror

Help yourself to a Nobel Prize:

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman said the government could borrow up to $5 trillion -- if needed -- to speed up a recovery from the recession.

Really, it looks like they hand these fucking things out to the mentally challenged for fun or something. Since they gave one to a convicted terrorist and racist dictator, they've really gone fucking downhill, haven't they? I mean, even Al Gore has one.

Daft as a fucking brush Swedish cunts.

Not sure what to make of this

It seems that Trixy's fantasy sex object has been the victim of some heavy briefing, rather than Trixy's heavy breathing:

David Miliband was beginning to look as accident-prone as Mr Bean last night after yet another adventure backfired.

After ruining his chance of the Labour leadership by gurning at the cameras while brandishing a banana, the Foreign Secretary's visit to India last week was labelled a "disaster" by the country's leading politicians.

He was accused of being "aggressive in tone and manner" in a meeting with the Indian Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, and dismissed as a "young man" by senior officials.

Er, whatever. Sounds a bit like being savaged by a dead sheep, really. Still, it's in the Indie, which seems to be making a bit of a name for itself as being just as good as the Daily Mail.

More egregious hypocrisy from the Indie

Fuck me gently with a broken bottle:

Silicon Valley, as everyone now calls it, pioneered the developments that gave rise to the computer industry in the 1970s. In the 1980s, it led the biotechnology revolution. In the 1990s it famously drove the dot-com boom. And now it is taking on the biggest transformation of all by staking billions on making the future green.

I go there every year to judge some environmental awards.

I can only guess that he paddles a canoe across the Atlantic every time.

Overweening, self-righteous cock-sniffer that he is.

And so it begins

Yep. Already the Blairite rule by media has commenced:

Barack Obama inauguration: world waits for the 17 minute speech

and

Inauguration speech will see Barack Obama urge his country to unite in a common resolve for 'renewing America's promise'

It's the little things, like leaking speeches. If the press already has the text of the speech, they don't need to bother actually turning up for the speech. And nobody else does either, so they start to disengage from the political process.

And of course, the hugely wasteful "Dubya" administration wasted a horrifying $40 million on Bush's second inauguration, causing Al-Jabeeba to fret endlessly about Bush's arrogance and misguided priorities. I'm sure they'll be frantic about The One spending $170 million on his coronation.

I'm telling you, this is going to be just like 1997 was for us: hope for greater "social justice" followed by massive increases in stealth taxation, wasted federal budgets, government by media management, mendacity and misdirection and finally total disillusionment.

America: welcome to our world!

Update: is this his Alistair Campbell?

Tip of the clown wig to Blaney.

It's not often I'd return to an RIP, but ...

Speaking markets

The market has reviewed the Gorgon's various flailing attempts at saving the world. It has found them somewhat wanting:

Bank shares plummeted today amid concerns that the latest government package to stabilise banks and encourage lending would not solve the deepening economic crisis.

Royal Bank of Scotland was the biggest faller in the FTSE 100 share index, its price collapsing by more than 66%, to 11.6p, after it warned of the largest loss in British corporate history of up to £28bn and its chief executive, Stephen Hester, admitted that full-scale nationalisation of the bank had been considered.

The taxpayer already owns 58% of RBS but this will soon rise to 68% when £5bn of preference shares owned by the government are converted into ordinary shares.

The first day of dealing in shares of the newly created Lloyds Banking Group resulted in a 34% drop to 65p. The bank, which now has more branches than any of its rivals, issued a trading statement insisting that Lloyds TSB had been trading "satisfactorily", while HBOS, which it rescued in a deal brokered by Gordon Brown, had not suffered any "significant change" in its trading position.

Unlike RBS, Lloyds TSB is not asking the government to convert the preference shares it owns in the combined bank into ordinary shares, which means the taxpayers' stake is staying at 44%.

Eric Daniels, the chief executive of Lloyds, said the bank was "continuing its ongoing constructive dialogue" with the government about the wide range of measures announced today. Among them is a plan to sell insurance to banks to help them cap the losses on loans that have turned sour in the credit crunch.

HSBC, the only bank listed on the stockmarket not to have raised any fresh funds, insisted it would not need to use the government insurance scheme.

Looks like HSBC are getting a new customer, then. Meantime, the Gorgon's rescue plan has achieved, at unspeakable expense, the square root of fuck all.

A do-nothing party! My kingdom for a do-nothing party!

A new definition of the word "won", of which, I was not previously aware

Olmert says: "We won."

Half-concealing a smile of self-satisfaction as he declared a unilateral ceasefire, the Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert has assured Israelis that “we won.” Claiming that the Israeli army had obtained all its objectives, he said that Hamas was “surprised and badly beaten.”

Gosh, is that a piece of biased reporting or what? Cock-sniffing Indie cuntwafts. But no, you Trotskyite suckers of Arab cock, Olmert didn't "win". What Olmert needed to do to "win" was to utterly crush Hamas and reduce them to a bunch of wailing widows. Because now, after unilaterally declaring a ceasefire (which I guess means that Hamas will carry on lobbing rockets at the yids) to pander to world opinion, they haven't won fucking anything.

Hamas will regroup and start lobbing rockets at the yids again. And the yids will bear it stoically for a while until a bunch of innocent women and children are killed and then they'll go back into Gaza or wherever and the whole fucking thing will start again.

So despite the egregiously cuntish reporting in the Independent, I find it hard to consider this anything but an utter failure.

I was going to blog about Ken Clarke ...

... but then I read this, and thought, "Why bother?"

Update: OK, there's this as well.

Will libertarianism ever take off?

When I see poll results like this, and read articles like this, I wonder if libertarianism is ever going to be viable.

The poll results are:

Con : 45
Lab : 32
Lib : 14

which leaves 9% of the population elsewhere,

or:

Con : 41
Lab : 32
Lib : 15

which leaves 12% of the population elsewhere.

A couple of things strike me as interesting. First and foremost, 32% of the population actually still support the Labour Party, despite more than a decade of flapping around with corporatism, war-mongering, sucking up to the Great Satan, loads of talk but no actual help for the working man, etc. So, why are Labour's supporters still on board? My only guess is that they are fucking stupid and would, quite literally, vote for a dog turd that was carrying a red rose. If you also consider fucking mental tax rates, collapsing education, the NHS up the shitter, lies, corruption, sleaze, Mandelsnake, Bliar, the Prime Mentalist, Harridan Harmperson, etc., I can't see why anyone who was not a dyed-in-the-wool Labour supporter would still be on board. But at least one-third of the country's voters are terminally stupid.

Secondly, given the above, the fact that the Conservatives are not at 50%-plus shows that people are skeptical of the Tories, who really are struggling to differentiate themselves from Labour. "We aren't nasty old Tories, we'll tax and spend just like the Gorgon, we are a party of social justice, just like Labour, we're just better at managing the machine of state." Sure Dave, that's compelling. The fact that you can't come up with a better message than that, and the fact that you can't see that people are fucking tired of tax and spend shows just how much use you're going to be.

Thirdly, what is the point of the LibDems? Really?

Fourthly, if we look at the marginal / swing / whatever voters, it looks like 10-15% of the country's voters actually decide anything. That sucks donkey cock.

Fifthly, most of the 10% who aren't voting for the big three are presumably all voting for the BNP or the Greens, both of whom can be described as militant wings of Labour, so they're no fucking help at all.

In discussions that I've had with even reasonably intelligent and sensible people, they just can't see the problem of letting politicians get on with what politicians want to do. They just don't seem to see that giving politicians free rein is why they're paying so much tax, why the rubbish collections are shit, why they feel so oppressed, even why there is fuck all decent to watch on the telly.

So if you're offended by some faceless mong on the internet calling you a thick cunt because of your laissez-faire attitude to politics or your mindless tribal voting, all I can say is: "You deserve to be called a cunt, you deserve all the pain you get in your life as a consequence of British politics and you deserve both in fucking spades."

If you don't like it, fucking think before you make your cross next time or before you decide not to bother.

What will the bogtrotters do?

It's a war, apparently:

"This is war: countries have to defend themselves," said David McWilliams, a former official at the Irish central bank.

"It is essential that we go to Europe and say we have a serious problem. We say, either we default or we pull out of Europe," he told RTE radio.

"If Ireland continues hurtling down this road, which is close to default, the whole of Europe will be badly affected. The credibility of the euro will be badly affected. Then Spain might default, Italy and Greece," he said.

As much as I like to indulge in idle revelrie about the Eurozone collapsing, the fucktards in the Irish government are far too deeply enmeshed in the Euro thing, so it ain't gonna happen.

But what a lovely idea, and they won't even be able to blame it on us. (I'm sure it won't stop them from trying!)

RIP Tony Hart ...

... morphing back to your constituent atoms.

I'm stepping out ...

... I may be some time ...

RIP labourlist

It's already dead, it just doesn't know it. The comments are all from right-wingers, all the left seems to offer is simpering fellatio. Mandelsnake (or whoever is logging in as him) is hinting at engaging with commentors, but doesn't actually say anything. The pre-moderation seems to be ruthless and the trashing has almost become pointless, dozens of posts seem to have been deleted.

So much for old Dolly Draper's flaccid witterings. Time to get back to shagging his wife, I think.

More on "doing nothing"

Via the inimitable Wat Tyler, I see how many civil servants we have:

Just for reference, there are currently 522,000 civil servants. The largest numbers are at the Department for Work and Pensions (116,000), HMRC (92,000), Justice (86,000), and MOD (78,000 - none of whom are men with guns).

I reckon we could get away with 5000. And their pay would be cut.

Cunts.

Trough snuffler whinges ...

... "it's all so hard!"

Freed from the shackles of Government, Jones described life as a junior minister as a "dehumanising" experience which "saps your personality".

It was also one "one of the most depressing experiences"

Boo fucking hoo. Bet you he's got his nose back in the trough within a year.

Cunt.

Al-Qa'eda scores another success

Their suicide duck squad has managed to down another of the Great Satan's planes:

A US Airways plane has crashed into the Hudson River in New York after apparently being hit by a bird.

All of the 148 passengers, two pilots and three cabin staff on board the Airbus A320 aircraft survived, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

Apparently, Osama Bin Liner is pissed off to the max and threatening the rest of the squad with withdrawal of virgin privileges.

It's official!

Cows can't sense earthquakes:

Swedish scientists have disappointingly discovered that cows do not have "an innate ability to detect natural disasters", thereby thwarting any possibility of deploying bovine imminent earthquake detectors in seismic hotspots.

I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell you!

Deranged fuckwit opens yap, talks shit

WTF?

A government minister was attacked by opposition party members today after she said she could see the "green shoots" of an economic recovery.

My guess is they're actually green polyps in the Gorgon's rectum, you daft flange. What the fuck is it with all these fucking Baronesses anyway? They all seem to be hugely corrupt or fucking mental. Perhaps they should wear a neon sign that says "Warning: Baroness. Keep away!"

We're all Prisoners now ...

... living in a surreal nightmare.

RIP Patrick McGoohan.

Of course, this will never happen here ...

... oh, no:

A New York City Police Department sergeant has admitted he illegally obtained a name contained in an FBI terrorist watchlist and gave it to an acquaintance to use in a child custody case.

According to documents filed in federal court in Manhattan, Khalil lacked the authority to access the information, so he used a fellow cop's username and password to gain entry. Remarkably, the fellow officer left his credentials on a notepad so his co-workers could access the system when he wasn't around.

Easy as that, huh?

The episode is exactly the kind of red meat that feeds critics of government watchlists, who say such databases are rife with potential for abuse. Law enforcement officials say such databases are carefully restricted, but as Khalil's guilty plea demonstrates, the measures can often be easily circumvented.

No shit, Sherlock.

That's not how you "do nothing", Gorgon

The Gorgon is predicting government spending of £650 billion next year. He says that the Tories are the do-nothing party, because they only want to spend £645 billion.

Dude, I know you don't know fucking shit about maths, but £645 billion as a percentage of £650 billion is 99.23%. It's so fucking close, it's not even worth mentioning, let alone describing as "doing nothing". So, let me show you how you really "do nothing":

Area of Government	2007 Spend £bn	Obo's 2009 Spend £bn
Pensions (formerly Social Protection)	159	80
Personal Social Services	26	5
Health	105	50
Transport	20	20
Education	78	78
Defence	32	32
Debt interest	31	60 (notice I'm not just paying the interest!)
Industry, Agriculture, Employment & Training	21	2
Public Order and Safety	33	33
Housing and Environment	22	5
Other	62	2
Total	589	372

Source of income	2007 income £bn	Obo's 2009 income £bn
Income tax	154	108
VAT	81	0
NI	97	97
Excise Duties	41	41
Corporate Tax	47	50
Council Tax	24	20
Business Rates	22	20
Other	86	36
Total	551	372

Assumptions: 10 million school children, 11 million pensioners, spend per scholar / pensioner / whatever I've dragged up from various untrustworthy sources.

All civil servants (state and county and town) will be told to re-apply for the jobs within 12 months and salaries offered will be slashed by 25% across the board. Pensions will be commercial "money-plan" types, there will no longer be a final salary scheme. Civil service job numbers will be reduced by 95% and salaries will be capped so that no-one can earn more than a MP, and MPs will have a salary of £75,000 in 2009 terms and the salary will increase by the reported rate of inflation. Only strictly audited expenses will be allowed. The number of MPs will be reduced to 325. Non-jobs will not be recreated, as I will personally have to approve any new job anywhere in the civil service.

The department of education will be replaced by a simple application that records where scholars are and transmits that month's funds to that school. Parents can swap schools on a monthly basis, there is no catchment system. Schools can choose who they want to accept and whether or not they want to charge fees. Schools will decide what the discipline policy is. Parents are free to come and go, but must accept the discipline policy of the school.

The NHS will be scrapped and replaced with commercial insurance providers who will get a monthly payment for all citizens registered with them that month. You will be able to swap health care providers on a monthly basis. The minimum health care provided by the state will be A&E and chronic or life-threatening issues such as cancer. Everything else will be a function of your top-up medical, or you could just pay the doctor.

All foreign military interventions will cease immediately. All military capex projects will be subject to immediate review based on requirements for a strong, nuclear-capable, national defence. All military accommodation to be completely overhauled.

All police chief commissioners will be made directly accountable to the electorate they serve with elections that will coincide with council elections. ACPO will be eliminated. All state-imposed targets will be removed. All police officers will also be forced to re-apply for their positions with the same constraints as civil servants.

We will immediately negotiate a withdrawal from the EU. All recycling legislation will be repealed. All EU directive-based legislation will be repealed. All other legislation introduced since 1997 will be repealed. The first year of parliament will work exclusively on identifying un-libertarian law and repealing it.

All transport subsidies will be removed from all sectors of public transport. All lines will be fully deregulated and anyone will be able to compete on any line or route. All transport funding will be aimed at a one-off refresh of the road network, predominantly in England (which seems to have roads in the worst condition overall). A number of A roads will also be upgraded to Motorway standard (A14 and A1 end to end are the first two that come to mind. A12 and A23 as well, probably.)

The only new projects I will consider is government "support" in the form of guarantees for nuclear power stations.

Pension, medical and school benefits only available to citizens / subjects of the Queen, obviously.

Huge simplification of tax process (sorry accountants!) Massive deregulation of all aspects of life. Complete quango and charity cull. Minor nibbling at Business Rates and Council Tax is all, I'm afraid, but VAT has gone and Income Tax has been slashed. I would have loved to have a go at all the Pigou taxes, but unfortunately that fat monocular cocktard has lumbered me with a shitload of debt. Once the debt has been cleared (probably not in my lifetime!) we could get rid of the unlibertarian Pigou taxes, and Council tax and Business rates would be replaced by Land Value Tax. Once people became more comfortable with spending their own money more effectively, the vouchers for health care and schools would probably decline in value and self-payment would become more common.

All civil servants (including police and MPs) will be entitled to published rate of inflation increases only.

My ultimate objective would be to have a budget that looked like this:

Area of Government	2007 Spend £bn	Obo's 2039 Spend £bn
Pensions (formerly Social Protection)	159	16
Personal Social Services	26	1
Health	105	1
Transport	20	5
Education	78	5
Defence	32	30
Debt interest	31	1
Industry, Agriculture, Employment & Training	21	1
Public Order and Safety	33	30
Housing and Environment	22	1
Other	62	1
Total	589	92

Source of income	2007 income £bn	Obo's 2039 income £bn
Income tax	154	0
VAT	81	0
NI	97	0
Excise Duties	41	0
Corporate Tax	47	0
Council Tax	24	0
Business Rates	22	0
LVT	0	92
Other	86	1
Total	551	93

Roughly speaking, your "council tax" or "business rates" would double, but there would be no other tax.

That, Gorgon, is how you fucking "do nothing".

You cunt.

One to avoid

This made me shudder:

Shane Ritchie will in February hit TV screens as Archie Daley in Five's 'reinvented' Minder, with the actor admitting he was a bit hesitant about tackling the role.

According to the BBC, Archie is the nephew of Arthur Daley - played in ten series between 1979 to 1994 by George Cole - who'll be accompanied by 29-year-old Lex Shrapnel as minder Jamie Cartwright, assuming the role originally tackled by Dennis Waterman.

We pay a license fee for this, and for being told we need the government to tell us how to live our lives?

Fuck off.

Too Little, Too Late

The excellent Capitalists@Work has summed up, to a (polite) word how I feel about the Gorgon's bungling economic "fisting stimulus":

Anyway, it is copied from the Tories with a hint of Vince Cable; well kind of, it is a sort of lukewarm re-hash.

I commend the whole thing to you, it is excellent and concise!

Is James Hansen fiddling the climate change numbers?

James Hansen is one of the world's most active MMGW alarmists. He personally controls the GISS data set, which is, oddly enough, the one that shows the greatest amount of global warming, often when other sets show no warming or even cooling. Via Bishop Hill, this bit of speculative statistical analysis:

One of the main sources of global warming information, the GISS data set from NASA showed significant management*, particularly a deficiency of zeros and ones.

* Or "fiddling" to you and me.

Dear Auntie Beeb ...

... please just fuck off!

I watched the dismal PMQs, which was followed by a segment from some fucking busybody harridan actively calling for more government nannying of fat people.

They've got the smokers.
They're working on the drinkers.
And now they're coming after the fatties.

Listen you jumped up motherfucking bossy booted cunts: just fuck off!

Because the more you grind us down, the worse it's going to hurt when it goes pop.

The Independent: Hypocrites

What a fucking bunch of hypocrites. Every other fucking day, they have some or other calamitous cockwaffle about "climate change" on their front page, yet what is on it right now?

Whether it's a bargain break or a flat-bed luxury flight, don't let the puny pound and faltering economy ruin your plans

Bunch of hypocritical, self-serving, middle-class tossers.

Another day, another bit of nannying

Just fuck off:

Increasingly, alcohol experts and liver specialists believe that breaks from alcohol are one of the best things drinkers can do for their health. An abstemious fortnight is more than just a token effort.

Nanny, nanny, nanny, hector, hector, hector, interfere, interfere, interfere ...

"Experts" who think everybody reacts in the same way to everything are nothing more than useless, space-filling, state-supporting cock sniffers. Just fuck off, the whole lot of you.

Hmmm...

EU Referendum has an interesting story here:

... the idea that Russia simply does not have the gas to sell is being to look more credible, and idea which we looked at here.

Does that not give credence to the Daily Express story that the EU is going to make a grab for our gas supplies:

BRITAIN’S vital North Sea oil and gas supplies are to be taken over by Europe under emergency plans revealed for the first time in Brussels yesterday.

EU leaders are demanding control of British energy reserves to prevent power blackouts that have left millions of eastern Europeans without heat in Arctic weather due to the Russian gas blockade.

Euro-MPs are calling for the creation of a European gas reserve, made up of British and Dutch supplies, which member states can tap into in the event of any future shortage.

The transfer of ownership would be enacted under secret powers written into the controversial Lisbon Treaty. It gives Europe the legal power to take over individual states’ supplies to “ensure security of energy supply in the Union”.

Ultimate control over Britain’s vast natural gas and oil fields – by far the biggest resource within the EU – will fall to Brussels if the new treaty, which has already been ratified by Britain, is adopted throughout Europe.

Can we please fucking leave yet?

Update: Some very worrying background from polaris.

What Dubya got right

The papers are all full of "what Bush got wrong" today. But I disagree violently with this one:

Abandoning the Kyoto Protocol

In 2001, Mr Bush refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty that requires participating countries to lower their greenhouse gas emissions. He cited its effect on the economy, but the auto industry is already on the brink and global climate change is a real problem. Even merely as a sign of intent, his signature would have been helpful.

Utter cock. It's the one thing Bush got absolutely right, the Kyoto Protocol is a load of wibble that will achieve the square root of fuck all, at enormous cost.

Informix Roundup: 13 Jan 2009

Embedding IDS RedBook.

Jobs in Hampton, Leicester, Marlow, West Midlands, London, London again and Uxbridge.

What I don't understand about the lending bailout

I see here that Lord Mandelsnake of Cuntlepool and Fey in the Cunty of Hertfordshire is trying arrange better credit for small businesses ... on the taxpayer, of course:

On the day the British Chamber of Commerce described economic figures for the fourth quarter as "truly awful... unprecedented... no positive features", Lord Mandelson's Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform was busy leaking plans for a £20bn guarantee for small business loans in another attempt to free up credit for businesses.

We're sure the original bank bailout was supposed to guarantee just that kind of lending, but hey, we're not highly-paid economists.

Indeed.

But what Lord Mandelsnake of etc., etc. really needs to be sharing with small businesses is how he managed* to buy such a nice place on such a minging salary. Because that's pure gold, that is, whatever he's done.

Update: Gweeds has more. Heh! Heh!

* Tip of the old clown wig to Guido.