🎵 Ohhhhhh Jacob Rees-Mogg ... 🎶

It is a depressing indictment of British politics that the left has emotional but untrue articles of faith on its side, and the right has totally capitulated to the forces of statism and authoritarianism.

Jeremy Corbyn has shaken off most of his dusty geography teacher image and is now becoming a polished media performer. His hideously adoring acolytes greet his every utterance as the profound words of some venerable sage, and go round chanting "Tory scum" and "hang the Tories" wherever they go. And it's not an idle threat, I believe that if they do come to power, there will be "justifiable" violence. If someone doesn't die, it'll be lucky.

For those of us who have a job and better things to do than gather every bloody protest march, the pickings are slim. "Anyone but May" was my message to the world when the Tories were picking a leader, and really, could anyone have done a worse job in front of an open goal than she has? She should have absolutely stomped Jeremy Corbyn into the ground, instead she gave him credibility and made him look prime ministerial by comparison.

And her policies are equally repulsive. Mayism is an awful hodgepodge of big state nannyism and nonsensical market intervention. Honestly, when lefties are pointing out that Help To Buy is a terrible idea and Tories think it's the answer, we have gone through the looking glass.

It all came to a head for me when Jacob Rees-Mogg was accosted by a bunch of Corbynista thugs at a Conservative Party Conference fringe event. He calmly spoke plain words of common sense to the idiot who was screaming at him. He told him some calm facts. He pointed out that someone's policies did not inherently make them a bad person, just someone with a different view. I'd love to say it was a Damascene conversion, but it won't be. Shabbir Lakha will doubtlessly go on to great depths as a third-rate politician, knowing righteously in his heart that only Corbynistas know the true path to enlightenment and anyone who disagrees with them deserves to swing from a tree.

How has it come to this? How have blood-thirsty, thuggish, middle-class Corbynistas come to be so devout? Why does no-one on the right have any useful riposte or any balls? How has a backbench politician become a media star for just calmly pointing totally reasonable and sensible things out to a screaming buffoon? Why does the screaming buffoon now have a media presence?

I don't want "Moggmentum". I don't want a leadership cult politician running the show, of either stripe. I was calm, confident competence. I want opposing views to be heard, discussed and tolerated. I don't want this underlying threat of violence that underlies so much of our politics today.

Jacob Rees-Mogg might well hold some awful views, but the people shouting at him hold even worse views. There isn't a politician out there who doesn't hold some awful views in someone's opinion. In my opinion, they all hold awful views. So maybe someone who can actually calmly speak in the face of thuggery, keep calm and have manners is all we can hope for.

Can we have more of this from politicians, please?

A new religion

A couple of days ago, it dawned on me why religion is becoming less relevant in our lives. It isn't. It's just that the god we worship is no longer the abstract skyfairy YHWH or his myriad descendants and variants, but the equally abstract (yet much more apparent) state.

Authoritarian worshippers of the two main factions (the Left and the Right) argue violently about which of them holds the keys to the True Way Forward To Holiness by insisting their grip on the levers of the state will lead to a path of plenty and righteousness.

As with most religious beliefs, the opportunities for apparently sensible, intelligent people to talk utter bullshit in defence of their religious hierarchy and slant on what the state should be are no more illogical and incomprehensible than Catholics refusing contraception in an era of HIV:

Funnily enough, last year one of those sympathetic to Brown had a very different take on a 17-year old tweeter. Graham Linehan noted in the case of “@Rileyy_69”, who was arrested for tweeting abuse (and a lame death threat) to Tom Daley:

As a symbol of free speech, Riley69 is not Lenny Bruce. He’s not even the EDL. He’s a teenager going through that thing a lot of teenagers go through where they seem unable to feel empathy. This kind of temporary sociopath can be very dangerous and using these new tools they can wreak havoc more efficiently than ever before.

He was all for Riley’s arrest - there was no ‘oh teenagers!’ on display here. Yet Riley69 wasn’t a public figure, just someone who had tweeted idiotic comments to a celebrity. If Tom Daley had quickly blocked him, almost no-one would have ever heard of him. Instead Daley alerted his followers and we ended up with people like Linehan defending Riley69’s arrest. The logic, then, that it’s simply awful to bring to light the casual homophobia/racism etc of a newly-pointed police figure but fine and dandy to arrest someone of the same age for their idiotic tweets seems rather…pained. It’s for this reason that I have zero doubt that, had Brown’s tweets not came to light via the Daily Mail but rather (say) through some left-wing blogger who presented them as highlighting her use of ‘faggots’, the response from many would be very different.

People on the Left will grumpily endorse actions from their bishops that would drive them insane if called for by the bishops of the Right and vice versa.

It's also ironic how many left-wing "atheists" will happily venerate the state to irrational heights. In a sense, I'd regard the Left as the devout Catholics of statism, and the Right as milque-toast CoE. The Left seem to have a peculiar belief in the holiness of the state: philanthropy and charity of individuals is shameful, the Holy State should provide for all from its extortion. The Right still go to church, but they've jettisoned some of the more ludicrous aspects of the theology.

Irrational, prone to violent and unreasoning reaction to heretics, filled with internecine squabbles and ridiculous sects, governed by arcane rules interpreted by people of dubious morality using their shamanic powers to hide disgusting deeds: religion has not gone away at all, the world has just adopted a hungrier, more violent god.

The Shard: 21st Century Britain in a nutshell?

On Thursday night, I was in London with Miss Mills. We went to see a private viewing of some art and then ambled off to the legendary High Timber for dinner and to grab a view of the light and laser show that announced the opening of the The Shard.

The dinner was epic, Miss Mills had smoked salmon to start, I had the crab. Both were awesome, but the salmon was definitely more to my taste. Miss Mills had the salt beef for mains, I broke with tradition and had the lamb. Now, the lamb was delicious, perfectly pink and utterly scrumptious, but the the salt beef blew it away completely. I must go back before that goes off the menu. All of this was washed down agreeably with Billecart-Salmon. For dessert, we had something called a "Don Pedro", which is apparently ice cream mixed with Kahlua. It was delicious and I can highly recommend it.

As dinner wrapped up, we could see the banks of the Thames and the Millenium Bridge lined with thousands of people waiting to see the promised "spectacular light and laser show". Anticipation was pretty high, considering we were in Britain's most cynical city.

Given that many millions had been spent on the Shard and given that the Shard has become a defining feature of the London skyline, we were all expecting something pretty impressive.

I think it's fair to say it wasn't.

After five minutes of watching the building change colour between blue, red, purple, yellow and white over and over, a couple of lasers came on and flickered listlessly. And that was that. It carried on forever, but people soon lost interest.

Miss Mills stole the words from my mouth when she described it as "a magnificent display of British mediocrity".

A total waste of a chance to stun people, to make something of an opportunity that had been pre-announced to death, that they knew was going to be watched by many thousands of people, totally and utterly wasted.

I've no idea of whether display was still going when we went to catch the Tube to our respective destinations and neither could anyone else, as they had all given up and fucked off as well.

On Friday, I tried to buy tickets for the Shard's new viewing platform...

I can't wait for the Olympics.

Is that really even a word?

Batmanghelidjh?

Apparently it is, and apparently Camila is one of the "good people", who actually does a lot of good things for "street kids". And I don't for a moment doubt that she does.

But the article left me feeling irritated for some reason.

London has woken up to street violence, and the usual narratives have emerged – punish those responsible for the violence because they are "opportunist criminals" and "disgusting thieves". The slightly more intellectually curious might blame the trouble on poor police relations or lack of policing.

Ah. The casual dismissive attitude towards people who dare to regard a bunch of opportunist criminals as opportunist criminals. Christ knows I am no fan of the police, but what is this shit about "police relations". The police are there to give you a crime number when you get burgled, nothing more and that is to a large fucking part because they spend so much time on fucking "community relations" that they can't be arsed to police any more.

Second, for those of us working at street level, we're not surprised by these events.

Casual smugness about those living in ivory towers or not being otherwise "down wiv da yoofs, innit?" is just as unwelcome. I'm not remotely surprised by these events, and I'm not even in the street kids business.

Twitter and Facebook have kept the perverse momentum going, transmitting invitations such as: "Bare shops are gonna get smashed up. So come, get some (free stuff!!!!) F... the feds we will send them back with OUR riot! Dead the ends and colour war for now. So If you see a brother... SALUTE! If you see a fed... SHOOT!"

Twitter and Facebook were also used by the police to warn and advise, or by people telling their friends and loved ones that they were safe. I only saw Twitter and Facebook used "for good", I guess I don't follow enough opportunist criminals to see the momentum you did. So fuck you and your fatuous example.

Working at street level in London, over a number of years, many of us have been concerned about large groups of young adults creating their own parallel antisocial communities with different rules. The individual is responsible for their own survival because the established community is perceived to provide nothing.

Apart from the dole money that they use to keep themselves in dope and booze, and the fucking council house they live in. But God forbid we dare to raise the idea that these fucking twats don't deserve the largesse of the people they looted from who already pay their cost of living!

Perhaps if they weren't so fucking entitled to a place to stay and a fucking handout, they wouldn't be so fucking dismissive of "the establishment". But Camila, I'm afraid "the establishment" does not have any money of its own. "The establishment" extorts money from taxpayers and the very people who had their businesses pillaged and destroyed were helping to pay the upkeep of the scum who robbed them.

Perhaps community outreach workers and the like could actually point this out a little more to the scum who think the world owes them a living.

The insidious flourishing of anti-establishment attitudes is paradoxically helped by the establishment. It grows when a child is dragged by their mother to social services screaming for help and security guards remove both; or in the shiny academies which, quietly, rid themselves of the most disturbed kids. Walk into the mental hospitals and there is nothing for the patients to do except peel the wallpaper. Go to the youth centre and you will find the staff have locked themselves up in the office because disturbed young men are dominating the space with their violent dogs.

This utterly fucks me off.

When I grew up, I had no fucking youth cunting centre in the entire fucking town. I cannot fucking stand this shitting bollocks that we need more cunting fucking cock-sucking youth centres. It's a fucking bullshit excuse because you don't need a fucking youth centre to read a book or play a game or ride a bicycle or fucking go to a movie.

If Camila is that fucking worried about street kids, why the cunt is she promoting this lazy shit that we need youth centres at all.

What we need is a society where kids are not entitled to be entirely disrespectful of the very people who are raising them or contributing to their very survival. The endless excusing of the behaviour of these twats and constant calling for someone from the council or the government to do something to give them facilities is the very cause of the problem.

Walk on the estate stairwells with your baby in a buggy manoeuvring past the condoms, the needles, into the lift where the best outcome is that you will survive the urine stench and the worst is that you will be raped. The border police arrive at the neighbour's door to grab an "over-stayer" and his kids are screaming. British children with no legal papers have mothers surviving through prostitution and still there's not enough food on the table.

Precisely because the estates are free. If you don't pay for something, it has no fucking value to you. The state doesn't give a flying fuck, it's not the state's actual money, and the people who live there don't give a flying fuck because they don't pay for it.

Why should British children have papers? What fucking bullshit point are you trying to make here?

Mothers surviving through prostitution is awful if they don't want to be prostitutes, but why is there not enough food on the table? Is it not perhaps because the mother is choosing to spend the money on something else? What is this shit? Assuming the mother gets a tenner a trick and does one a day, that's enough to feed a family of four, if you're not living off fucking Dominos or KFC. What is this shit?

It's not one occasional attack on dignity, it's a repeated humiliation, being continuously dispossessed in a society rich with possession. Young, intelligent citizens of the ghetto seek an explanation for why they are at the receiving end of bleak Britain, condemned to a darkness where their humanity is not even valued enough to be helped.

What the actual FUCK is this shit? If they're young and intelligent, they can get off their fucking arses and get a job or start their own business. What fucking "help" does a young and intelligent person need? How about a fucking kick up the arse?

Savagery is a possibility within us all. Some of us have been lucky enough not to have to call upon it for survival; others, exhausted from failure, can justify resorting to it.

Oh pass me my violin, Camila. Seriously. If Britain was a country where success wasn't vilified and denigrated, where the people who work the hardest and pay the most tax weren't insulted with demands to have more of their money stolen to feed and clothe and house the feckless and the lazy and the entitled, that would help more.

I've been on the fucking bones of my arse more than once, not knowing how I was going to feed and clothe my family and the thought of looting a 52" LCD TV never entered my mind. I have "failed" completely more than once and lost everything. I'm still here, I'm still raising my child and I'm not fucking setting fire to the livelihood of people more fortunate than myself.

It costs money to care. But it also costs money to clear up riots, savagery and antisocial behaviour. I leave it to you to do the financial and moral sums.

Or in English: "give me some money to salve your conscience".

But no, fuck that I say.

It doesn't cost money to care. Throwing money at problems like this, rather than individually taking responsibility for raising our own children and keeping them on the rails makes this whole fucking thing worse, a lot worse. Caring costs effort.

And that is one thing that we seem desperately unwilling to give.

Sorry mate, we're full

Things really have come to a pretty pass when banks don't want to take your money:

U.S. regulators have asked some banks to take more deposits from large investors even if it’s unprofitable, and lenders in return are seeking relief on insurance premiums and leverage ratios, according to six people with knowledge of the talks.

Deposits are flooding into the biggest U.S. banks as customers seek shelter from Europe’s debt crisis and falling stock prices. That forces lenders to raise capital for a growing balance sheet and saddles them with the higher deposit insurance payments. With short-term interest rates so low, it’s hard for financial firms to reinvest the new money profitably.

Regulators have asked banks to take the deposits anyway, three people said, with one lender accepting $100 billion. The regulators want lenders to take the deposits because it improves the stability of the financial system, according to one of the people, who said U.S. banks are viewed as places of strength.

Some of the largest ones have talked with regulators about softening rules for ratios that measure capital and assets, according to the people, who declined to be identified because talks are private. At least one asked for a waiver on paying higher premiums to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which is less likely to be granted, one of the people said.

A couple of things leap out of that story to me, first and foremost that the EU's banks are so fucked that the US banks look like a good bet.

Just think about that for a moment. The US economy is fucked, with fucked topping and still the money is pouring in from Europe, because Europe is even worse!

Secondly, my inevitable observation that regulation is proving to be an expensive bolting of the stable door, long after the horse has fucked off. Banks, who rode the wave of economic bubblery created by lunatic governments are now being taxed (because the deposit insurance is no such fucking thing, of course, it's just another Ponzi scheme) and taking in masses of money is so expensive and (government-mandated) interest rates are so low that they actually cannot afford deposits of large amounts of money.

Thirdly, this shows exactly why the EU's much-hyped "Tobin Tax" is doomed to failure, and worse yet, will actually probably fuck the entire financial industry beyond repair. It's true that masses of money are shifted around the markets in search of short-term gains, but often those gains are not significant amounts of money. If shifting a billion pounds from one account to another for a couple of days will cost you a fiver for your time and nett you a couple of grand, you'd probably do it (or have a clerk do it). But if you have to pay a grand to get two, is it still worth the effort?

I can see these escalating costs of "insurance", etc., totally destroying the movement of capital in search of gains, which means that the people who want that capital enough to get the gains, are not going to get them.

This will not end well.

The old ones are the best!

Yes, you moronic twat, your profligate money-pissing saved the world.

In other news, this:

Wall Street had its worst day for almost three years as shares tumbled on fears about the eurozone debt crisis and the US economic recovery.

The Dow Jones index closed down more than 500 points, or 4.3%, and came after the leading European bourses fell more than 3%.

It was the biggest one-day fall for the Dow since October 2008.

Earlier, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso warned that the sovereign debt crisis was spreading.*

Also in New York, the S&P 500 index fell 4.8% and the tech-rich Nasdaq was more than 5% lower.

Meanwhile, Frankfurt's Dax and London's FTSE 100 indexes had their worst day this year, closing almost 3.5% lower as investors fretted that Italy and Spain might become engulfed in the debt crisis.

"People are throwing in the towel because they can't find relief on any front," said Milton Ezrati, market strategist at Lord Abbett.

Investors sought the relative safety of gold, sending the price of the metal to a new record high of $1,677 an ounce.

Christ knows how many billions of pounds Brown's stupidity has cost us. Every time someone does the sums, it turns out that if we'd held on to the gold, it would have been worth more and more.

Obama's bailout of every greedy cunt who stuck their hand out has clearly fucking worked well.

Rather than actually addressing the structural and fundamental financial issues, it looks like a handful of companies got huge amounts of taxpayer funding thrown at them which has helped to the extent of the square root of fuck-all, as far as I can tell.

The Teleprompter Jesus has failed to save the US. The snotmuncher failed to save us. The collective wisdom of Gollum and his fuckwit elves is clearly not saving the EU.

The only upside of this is that by the looks of it, the Euro is going to go down the shitter in a hurry, so my holiday should be a cheap round this year.

*In February, Barroso displayed his deep financial knowledge by claiming that the Euro would protect the EU from default issues. The cunt.

Ed Miliband signs up to the Big Society

Well, bugger my toe. Mr Bean has only gone and hitched Labour's wagon to David "Forehead" Cameron's Big Society, talking about people helping each other out and taking responsibility for their own lives.

Cue much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments from the left on Twatter as their darling "left-wing" leader showed that he sees which way the electoral wind is blowing and needs to say all sorts of foetid shit to sound electable. Of course, we all know that he'll just piss our money away in the same old, same old Labour way if he ever does come to power, but what a shock to all the huddled bludging masses!

And yet, and yet ... so much of the speech is just load of empty, meaningless soundbites, if it was presented in an episode of The Thick Of It, our toes would all be curling in gleeful embarrassment.

A dollop of meaningless platitude, a healthy shot of socialist democracy, a long list of vacuous cries for someone other than a politician to have some responsibility, wrapped up in a bow of unsubstantiated claims that the other side have nothing to offer.

I tried, I really did try to read it. But I'd get about three paragraphs in and my eyes would glaze over and I'd start thinking about Marmite, or cake, or whether it was time to get a haircut. For someone who claims to disagree with Blair, he certainly uses the same bloodless waffle, even if he can't deliver it as well.

Political discourse in this country is truly fucked. There is no polite way to say it.

Nobody argues for anything any more. Nobody will challenge the orthodoxy. Every speech requires hours of analysis and repositioning because nobody will come out and say what they mean. The speech is delivered with a couple of vague hooks. Spin doctors then look at how the media and the public react and then spin furiously in agreement or denial, depending on whether the response is positive or not.

Nobody dares to actually say anything, lest the Mail or the Graun or Rupert disagrees.

So we have this tepid, anodyne, hair-splitting bullshit instead. And then politicians moan about the lack of "democratic engagement". Hint: how about you fuckers give us something to engage with? Honestly, if you take out Ed's half-arsed "attack" on the Big Society, is there anything in his speech that would sound odd if it were delivered by Cameron or Clegg?

There is no political interest because none of the parties are offering anything dramatically different. The electorate may be stupid, but it's not that stupid that it thinks these people are offering anything different from each other. The coalition government actually shows that the electorate could see that Cameron wasn't offering anything better than Labour was, but that people were just sick of Labour's hectoring politicians. That's why there was such a low turnout and why there was no clear winner.

And I've said over and over that to a libertarian, there is no difference between a social democrat Tory party, a social democrat LibDem party and a social democrat Labour party. The fact that Ed Milipede can spout something indistinguishable from Big Society while rubbishing Big Society just shows that just like Tories can nick Labour policies with impunity, Labour can do the reverse equally easily.

They are all the same.

And we are all fucked.

Call it my natural cynicism...

... but for some reason when the Teleprompter Jesus declared that the world was now a safer place since Osama Bin Laden had been shot and conveniently fed to the fishes, I wasn't entirely convinced.

Nor, it seems, was anyone else after every country in the world raised its threat level to "Shit your pants and keep a close eye on brown people".

I can't help but feel like Obamalamadingdong has done exactly the wrong thing here and given the sick, ageing terrorist, who was becoming marginalised all over again, a brand new centre-stage martyrdom.

This kind of summary "justice" just doesn't leave me even remotely reassured. I don't, for one moment, believe that Osama Bin Laden did not deserve to die. He absolutely did, but he was not tried or found guilty. Crime is filled with people who have claimed responsibility for the crimes of others, and Osama never really did get round to being proven guilty for anything he was blamed for or took responsibility for.

The whole story stinks, and I'm not the only one who thinks so.

He was shot on the orders of a supposedly "liberal" president who may just need an amazing turn of events to boost his flagging popularity. The same fucktard who then immediately turned around and lied about how much safer this murder has made the world, while cranking up the security a few notches for the rest of us.

When Obama came to power, I noted how much he reminded me of Tony Blair, smooth and unprincipled and a master of presentation but fuck-all else. It didn't occur to me that he was just as viciously amoral as that murderous cunt Blair ever was.

It never occurred to me that he would actually go as far as "killing" Bin Laden just to bolster his poll ratings.

Why? Why? Why?

I read this, and I laughed. But then I made the fatal mistake of reading the base article:

HMRC rushed out an apologetic statement from the senior civil servant.

"I am deeply sorry that people are facing an unexpected tax bill," Mr Hartnett said.

"Everyone in HMRC is working hard to make this as painless as possible. I apologise if my remarks came across as insensitive. I am working flat out with my colleagues to ensure everyone's tax is correct and the new computer system will help us do this.

"It was this new system that revealed the extent and size of reconciliations required and will help us be more accurate in future but we do not underestimate the distress caused to taxpayers and once again I apologise."

Just one day earlier, it was completely fucking different:

Dave Hartnett, the country's top tax official, has refused to apologise to 1.4 million people facing demands for extra money – adding that the situation was not "extraordinary".

Asked if he would say sorry to those facing unexpected bills, Mr Hartnett told BBC Radio 4's Money Box programme: "I'm not sure I see a need to apologise.

"I've read the papers, listened to the media and heard stories of HMRC blunder and IT failure – neither of those are true.

ONLY 1.4 million people? ONLY?

Why is this MOTHERFUCKING CUNT allowed to get away with a fucking apology? Why is his fucking barefaced arrogance not just kicked the fucking fuck out of his overpaid, clearly fucking unaccountable job? Why am I contributing towards his fucking salary?

Uncritical reporting

It's when I read things like this, that I really wonder how far the dumbing down of Britain (and, probably, the world) has gone.

We are so dependent on the media to give us the facts and they don't bother to check them. Hell, I'm no better, just look at how easily I was gulled, ungulled and re-gulled about the "Ground Zero mosque".

In an age of spin, deceit by omission, context and outright lies, how the fuck do we know when we're being told the truth? And where can we actually go for fact-checked, reliable reporting*?

*Don't tell me "blogs", because I'm a blogger and I lack the talent and ability to check my own facts -- I don't believe that the vast majority of bloggers are any better.

Carswell is miffed

Poor lamb:

Leon Brittan has been appointed as a trade adviser to the government. Not that the UK government has any real say over UK trade policy. As an ex-Eurocrat, I’m sure Lord Brittan knows that already.

But still, why not appoint as a trade adviser a man whose career saw him help lock UK trade ever more tightly into the sclerotic, high tax / high regulation Eurozone? It could be just the thing to stimulate trade with India and China.

The fact Lord L happens to have been explicitly hostile to the Tory cause in the run up to the last set of Euro elections even gives his elevation an uber moderniser, welcome-to-the-Big-Tent twist.

Moan, moan, moan.

Enough about technocratic appointments. How are those Coalition proposals to make government more accountable to Parliament coming along?

This, ladies and gentlemen, is an elected MP. One with connections, a decent, coherent plan to sort things out, one that has been thought through well in advance and not "on the hoof", someone whose plans and opinions get a reasonable amount of airtime and yet, HE can't change the social democrat juggernaut's direction.

Our elected representatives are completely powerless to make things better or even different. All the visible power is concentrated in the hands of those ministers who have El Presidenté's ear and all the real power is in the hands of unelected quangocrats and bureaucrats. It just goes to show what a pathetic charade the so-called democracy we are run by, is.

Still, it's nice to know that people can still delude themselves by telling us all how a few words in the right ear will make it all better.

Change from the inside!

Yeah, right.

I read this:

Mrs Hodge was a local hero: here, at last, was a politician who was prepared to listen to voters and speak out on their behalf.

That should read: "here was a politician who was prepared to say what her electorate wanted to hear."

The reality of British politics is that even if a group of politicians want to do anything, the real power is held by a tiny cabal of dripping wet fucks who are only interested in social democracy. And the truth of the matter is that there are only a tiny minority of the 646 who actually have a coherent, articulated agenda. The rest of them are just lobby fodder.

That means that the residents of Barking and Dagenham will continue to be a dumping ground, that means that welfare (rather than beneficial economic growth) will continue to attract people from poorer EU and other countries and that empty posturing will continue to be the order of the day.

You just KNOW this is going to end well

Home secretary Theresa May has announced plans to review the use of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders as she pledged a “coherent and comprehensive” strategy to deal with anti-social behaviour. Ms May criticised the last government’s approach as “top down, bureaucratic and gimmick laden.”

Oh yeah? And as we've already seen over and fucking over, this government is completely different to the last one, eh?

Cunts.

On why this country is utterly fucked

This raised my eyebrows:

Ipsos-MORI’s July political poll will make uncomfortable reading for the coalition as the summer break looms. It has the Tories on 40 percent, Labour on 38 percent and the Lib Dems on 14 percent.

Now look, I know I rail against these coalition cunts. But I'm a anarchist, and even any real minarchist libertarian would be railing against what they're doing compared to what they're saying.

But the thing is, most of the country isn't libertarian or anarchist. Most of the country is disinterested in politics or broadly OK with social democracy. And everything the coalition is doing is pretty socially democratic.

And in social democratic terms, I don't think the coalition has put a foot wrong. It's said all the right things. The economy looks pretty good considering, probably too rosy, in my opinion, but clearly I'm in a minority. Cameron looks and behaves in a suitably Prime Ministerial manner and people seem to be remarkably comfortable with the coalition.

Labour is in disarray, with a lacklustre rostrum of cowards, nonentities, frauds, charlatans, bullies and hypocrites running for the leadership. They don't even have a fucking leader, and based on the choice facing them, they're probably better off without one.

So how the fucking fuck can they be this close to the Tories in the polls? How the fucking fuck can people have already forgotten 13 years of increasing state intrusion in our lives or 13 years of glorious economic mismanagement?

Could it possibly be that it's because people are that fucking stupid that they want more of that shit?

I laughed

Europasionaria wrote:

Amazing. I've discovered you article on Wikio's e-blogs in French. I'm a French person living in Brussels and I just find it wonderful that I hear about this French advertising campaign reading a translated article from a British blog :)

And then I cried:

On the topic of your article, it's simple, nowadays we can't do anything anymore, especially in France. Cigarettes, alcohol, sex, food, all the things that give us pleasure, it's all bad bad bad. The obligation to be healthy/thin/beautiful, in other words perfect, has become more and more stressful.

If the French aren't telling their government where to get off, Europe really is fucked, isn't it?

The US had the stimulus ...

... so where's the inflation? Samizdata has the answer.

Truth, but... (for @sfj1642 )

Sorry, but if you decide to have kids, you pay for them yourself. Why should I subsidise your lifestyle choices?

-- sfj1642 on twitter

In a sane world, that would be a perfectly reasonable point of view. Unfortunately, back here in the real world, the fact of the matter is this: those kids will one day be paying your (state) pension, your (state) healthcare and any other state benefits or services you may depend on. The state does not make provision for the future, it pays its historical "future debts" out of current cash flow.

That is why it is so vital to the governments of the future that population in the UK continues to grow, whether through immigration or through population growth. If the population ceased to grow, there would not be enough money left for the government to meet the commitments it made generations ago to people still around today.

And changing this is one of the best arguments for changing from a social democrat model of government to a libertarian one: future costs have to be properly funded. Just look at how many pension time bombs are ticking away because of the statist model today. It's not going to get any better by itself.

It's going to hurt some people, probably. But if we don't do it voluntarily and in a carefully-considered manner -- and soon! -- we could really see pensioners dying in the streets, either during my lifetime or those of my children.

The Mass Debate

No, not the snake oil and lies peddled by the leaders of the three factions of the LibLabCon Party, but the debate about who won.

Everyone seems to agree that Clegg "won", Cameron did OK, but not great and The Flunking Cyst was useless. There was some amazement that it wasn't entirely dull and stilted.

The LimpDumbs are unshutupable about their new-found impotence, er, importance. The Tories are furiously decrying Cleggover's shameless lies while equally furiously ignoring the utter bollocks their leader spouts. Labour is delighted that there might be someone taking Tory votes but are being very quiet about the performance of the nutter with the stutter.

But people seem to think that this facile beauty parade is all a "game-changer". In the mean time, the country is racing towards a trillion-and-a-half Pounds of debt, we're spied on in new and exciting ways ever day, our kids can't read or write and we're drowning in laws, regulations and statutory instruments which even the people who promulgate them can't keep track of. None of them are going to change this.

Our "leaders" are steaming vigorously towards the iceberg and we're deciding who's going to look best behind the wheel as we die screaming, drowning in freezing waters (well, we'll drown - they'll be on a fucking luxury lifeboat!) Adulating lunatics, blindly cheering on their rosette colour and arguing over things that, ultimately, lead us over the same cliff.

I think I'm going to start drinking now. And I don't think I'm going to stop.

Update: Blimey: the Guardian!

Clegg: The other two are just liars and we want to do things differently.

Brown: The other two are just liars and we want to carry on doing the same.

Cameron: We are going to be tough on immigration because I once met a black man who is worried about it.

Clegg: We're going to be even tougher.

Brown: What's he doing here?

Cameron: I haven't a clue.

Clegg: We will have millions more policemen because I've met someone who has been burgled.

Cameron: We'll have even more.

Brown: No, you are going to cut them.

Clegg: They sound exactly the same.

Brown: Ha, ha. I'm going to kill you later.

Cameron: I'm going to keep Trident to nuke the Chinese.

Clegg: I can save billions by taxing Lord Ashcroft.

Brown: We have to carry on spending on the NHS because I met a cancer patient who said she was only alive thanks to me.

Alastair Stewart: Well, you three look half dead. Same time next week

On the money again

Spot on*:

The polls suggest voters want change, but many don’t want to make sacrifices or accept the idea of Britain living within its means. They’ll moan about rules and red tape but they fear the state withdrawing in any meaningful way. It’s why Gordon Brown is still in this race.

*For RonniesOak: the attribution is the link embedded in the words "Spot on". You fucking mong.

Terrifying

There's no other word for it.