Teachers - huh!?

Let me get this straight: stricter tests proposed for teachers mean that they'll catch out people who can't spell or add up?

And immediately, lefties are claiming that these illiterate, innumerate teachers will go work for academies or free schools?

Can I just point out that these illiterate and innumerate teachers, with degrees, are graduates of the supposedly better teaching system that all you lefties are defending?

Thank you.

Oh, what a surprise!

Words fail me. In the light of the Savile row, we are now blessed with the delightful prospect of paedo allegations, even if they are unproven, dogging you for the rest of your life.

Our saintly Prime Minister casually let it slip in PMQs yesterday that even if the Cunt Persecution Disservice decide that there isn't enough evidence to support a prosecution, allegations will definitely be shared with "relevant organisations".

Just stop for a moment and think about that.

Because of a culture of matey mutual back-scratching amongst pillars of the establishment, any allegation of being a paedo no longer needs to be proven for you to be dogged by them for the rest of your life.

Pretty cool, huh?

And of course, once the children are protected, why, then ... why would you need ANY allegation to be proven before it trails behind you for the rest of your life?

This shortly after the decision to tag "habitual criminals" indefinitely to make sure everyone knows where they are.

Where are these fuckwits going and why the cunting fuck are they no less authoritarian and no less determined to snoop than the last fucking cockmunchers?

Cunts.

THEY ARE ALL CUNTS.

Theenk of the cheeeeeeldrennn!

I remember now why I don't watch news TV any more. This morning, while I was having my morning piss, I had the misfortune of being able to hear Margaret Atkinson, the "Children's Commissioner for England" wittering on about the effect of "regular" binge drinking parents on their kids.

"Regular binge drinking" apparently means getting pissed, whether it's once a week or once a month. Apparently, if you do this, it's detrimental to the health of your kids. (Never mind if the little fuckers drive you to drink, eh?)

But these kids are so sophisticated. Apparently, they want warning labels on booze and they want to ban booze advertising. Who saw that coming, eh?

Who would have thought, when supporting all these unpleasant restrictions on those evil smokers, that boozers would be next in line? Heaven forbid!

So, the opening salvo in the war on drink has been fired. For the cheeeeeldrennn!

First up: warning labels on booze. Then when that does nothing, graphic warning labels on booze. Then when that does nothing, a ban on booze advertising. Then when that does nothing, plain packaging on booze.

And then, of course, McDonalds, Dominos and Burger King.

1984 - here we come!

Dale Farm

It is a truism that if the UN is united on something, then the correct thing to do is the exact opposite of what they are saying:

The government must suspend the "immature and unwise" eviction of 400 Travellers from Essex green belt and seek a peaceful solution, the UN and a European human rights group said.

So, let me get this straight: things are so fucking peaceful and perfect in the rest of the world that the UN has enough time to give a shit about 400 pikeys getting hoofed out of an illegal settlement? No-one is dying in a war or famine or something?

Well, that's just fucking excellent news, for a change. Because, of course, if millions of people were dying in genocides or catastrophes, and the UN was bitching about a perfectly legal eviction from England's precious "green belt", well, then they'd look like a fucking bunch of cocksniffing fuckwits, wouldn't they?

Oh, they are a bunch of cocksniffing fuckwits, then.

This whole Dale Farm thing really gets on my tits. I don't believe that all of England's greenery is as fucking sacred as it's made out to be and so I'm quite in favour of people using land to fucking build houses on and stop the ludicrous home-ownerism in this country.

But as much as I believe that planning permission is a crock of shit, I believe more in the rule of law. And if I have to go through a mire of cunt soup to build an extension on my existing home, I can't see why a bunch of fucking pikeys can do whatever the fuck they like and not only get away with it, but get the fucking UN involved in sucking their collective cocks.

It's the same fucking thing with closed sessions at the public pool for Muslim women. Jesus. Imagine if I said that I wanted the pool for three hours a week exclusively for CoE males - I'd be laughed out of the fucking building. Yet here in this godforsaken corner of England, there are times I am not allowed to enter the swimming pool because my gender and creed are not the one whose cock gets sucked by every diversity-coordinating fuckmong in the country.

I think by and large most people, not just the British, are pretty tolerant of strangers. But everybody resents minorities who trade on the minorityness to get things that are forbidden to the rest of us.

So on balance, I'm going to say: fuck the pikeys, fuck the UN, and God help me ... I'm rooting for Basildon Council.

Ford: thinking of the cheeeeldren

I was somewhat less than amused to see that Ford has introduced nanny-state cars:

The US motoring company announced that it was extending a concept called MyKey to its European models from next year. The system allows owners to programme a particular key with limitations for the vehicle, including a maximum speed and even a cap on the audio system's volume.

Already standard on most US Ford models, the technology allows a series of options designed to make teenage motoring as safe – or, depending on your perspective, as irritating – as parents choose.

The maximum speed can be set at an already-illegal 80mph, with the option of warning chimes at 45, 55 or 65mph. Another feature means the system that curbs tyre spin cannot be deactivated. Seatbelt reminders can be set to be more regular and insistent than usual, with the radio set on silent till the deed is done.

Seriously. It's a good thing I don't fucking buy Fords, but really? I would just fucking "lose" my key and have to borrow my dad's. The whole fucking thing smacks of lunatic cotton-wool-wrapping gone totally fucking bonkers.

As if that wasn't enough:

In a slightly more nannyish vein, the warning about low fuel can be made to sound sooner, while there is an option to bar deactivation of electronic parking assistance and blind spot detection systems.

"In a slightly more nannyish vein"??? How is that more fucking nannyish than limiting speed or hifi volume, for fuck's sake?

How fucking long will it be before the government gets to dictate what parts of the car we can and can't control any more.

Of course, it's no surprise that this useless bunch of turd-burgling fuckmonkeys are happy turn motorists even more ovine than they already are, they've got a long tradition of cosying up to bullying fucks who "know better".

I'm sure BRAKE are masturbating themselves into a coma over this mongstrosity.

The invisible man on Twitter

"*"
- Oliver Letwin on Twitter

Clearly, Mr Letwin is a man of few words on twitter, although he recently said a mouthful elsewhere:

Oliver Letwin, the coalition's policy minister, has revealed the government's determination to instil "fear" among those working in the public sector, who he claimed had failed for the past 20 years to improve their productivity.

I really have no idea what he means.

Although at a recent social gathering, a Treasury civil servant tried to convince me that civil servants are not overpaid, by outlining the salary the Treasury's head of Child Poverty was likely to attract.

When I pointed out that in real terms, the UK not only has no actual poverty, but actually has no idea what poverty even looks like, I could see the rolling eyes. When I pointed out that the average person in Africa would regard the life of the meanest, poorest dole-bludger in a Glasgow tenement as a life of complete luxury and ease, the penny dropped.

The problem is not that there are not hard-working civil servants. I'm sure that if you looked around hard enough, you could find a handful. But even if you ignore the bureaucratic empire-building that goes on, with five people doing the work of two, there is still the fundamental problem of productivity. That the Treasury has a department, however small or large it may be, to deal with a problem that does not exist in reality, but only exists in the minds and tick-box targets of empire-building civil servants, simply indicates where a large part of the problem is.

My employer is a massive, bureaucratic monster. But even they don't employ a Department of Child Poverty. It's got nothing to do with the continued success of the business. (This despite my employer having a positively annoying number of diversity and inclusion fora and voluntary social outreach programs.)

But the Treasury gets money no matter what it does. And perversely, the more it fucks up and the more stupid ideas it has, the more of our money it can take.

In essence, for every hard-working civil servant (apparently 14-hours a day is a lot!) there are rooms full of dross, people who may mean well, who may have families to feed and all the rest, but in truth are just sucking up everyone else's money and resources and there are also entire departments that exist for no other reason than somebody with sufficient clout in the organisation wanted them to exist.

Letwin, architect of the coalition's plans to reform public services, told a meeting at the offices of a leading consultancy firm that the public sector had atrophied over the past two decades.

I think Letwin is wearing rosy specs here. The public sector has been atrophying since it was born.

In controversial comments angering teachers, nurses and doctors, he warned that it was only through "some real discipline and some fear" of job losses that excellence would be achieved in the public sector.

Ah, "teachers, nurses and doctors", the Holy Trinity of the left-leaning twat. Because of course, admin clerks and the rest don't really matter do they? But anger a teacher and WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHEEEEEELDREN? Not to mention the saintly, untouchable NHS!

So, every other civil servant, be told: you don't matter. Only teachers, nurses and doctors matter. Even the Guardian thinks the rest of you are scum**.

Letwin added that some of those running schools and hospitals would not survive the process and that it was an "inevitable and intended" consequence of government policy.

"You can't have room for innovation and the pressure for excellence without having some real discipline and some fear on the part of the providers that things may go wrong if they don't live up to the aims that society as a whole is demanding of them," he said.

And this is the nub of the argument, and probably the only time I'm going to agree with an MP.

I compete in my job. I have to impress my manager just to keep my job. I have to compete with the people in my team, I have to show willing, I have to excel to show I deserve my bonus. There is always some or other headcount reduction (or other cost reduction) program going on. But because I'm doing my job well and making the difference, I'm not worried about losing my job.

I would do it anyway, because it's not just the technology that excites me, I like making a difference and making problems go away. But if I was going to collect the same salary whether I bust a gut or not and I knew I'd never lose my job, I'm pretty sure there would be days where I would pull a sickie or get hammered the night before and sit in the office playing Freecell. And who knows, it might get to be addictive and maybe I'd stop working altogether, become a Wally in Dilbert-speak.

But along with the carrot of job satisfaction is the fact that I'm a parent with a kid to feed and my job is not guaranteed for life.

"If you have diversity of provision and personal choice and power, some providers will be better and some worse. Inevitably, some will not, whether it's because they can't attract the patient or the pupil, for example, or because they can't get results and hence can't get paid. Some will not survive. It is an inevitable and intended consequence of what we are talking about."

I really can't see why lefties are up in a froth over this. Do they really believe that if someone is a shit doctor and patients don't want to see them, they should get paid (and presumably still be doctors as well)? If someone is a useless teacher, would you want them teaching your kids?

Of course you fucking don't. So why the hell are you pretending that any of this is controversial?

*@oliverletwin hasn't tweeted yet.

**This is a joke. I think.

The horror that is the free market

Imagine, just for a moment, a world without a government to protect us, to compensate us when Shit Happens (we will come back to this in a moment, I'm sure).

In such a world, there would be no statutory regulation, no minimum wage, no closed shop unions, no vested interests that exist precisely because government enables it.

In this appalling world, markets would be truly free. And a free market is an interesting thing. People speak about the "free market" (which absolutely does not and cannot exist in a world which contains statutory regulations) as though it's some sort of evil monster that can "fail".

Such thoughts fundamentally and profoundly misunderstand what a free market is. A free market is merely the recording of prices for the exchange of goods and services when there are no legislated barriers to entry from either the supplier's side or the consumer's side.

It has no power, it is merely the recording of the price agreed when two parties freely agree to trade.

Let's assume (in the world without government) that you are walking along a beach on a hot, sunny day and you come across a lemonade stand. You have no idea how the lemonade is made, but you're hot and thirsty and the vendor wants a pound for a glass of cool lemonade. You buy it and drink it. He has a pound in his pocket, you are refreshed, both parties have gained from the transaction, both parties are happier than they were before.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the absolute horror of the free market in action. The thing that socialists blame for the collapse of the world's economy.

Of course, it gets more complicated. I think I can make a better lemonade for the same money or even less. So the next sunny day, I make up a batch of lemonade and I go set up a stall next to him. I want to get customers to buy my lemonade (which I think is better) and so I sell it for 99p, or 95p or whatever. I still make a decent profit at this price, and because my lemonade is nicer, I sell out quickly and the other vendor is forced to either bugger off, or lower his price to 90p. He's still making a profit, and although my lemonade is better, he grabs back more market share. If I don't sell out my batch of lemonade, I am forced to cut my price so that my price is the same as or better than his, or so that the price difference is so small in my favour that people don't mind paying the difference for my lemonade and I sell out.

At the end of this round of horse trading, we stabilise at about 80p per glass for him and 81p per glass for me, because it costs us 50p to make it and neither of us is prepared to do it for less than 30p per glass profit. Someone else comes along and decides, he's prepared to do it for 25p per glass profit, or he has a source for cheaper ingredients and so the battle starts all over again.

At no point in this bloodthirsty, violent struggle has any of us lost out -- we are all still trading voluntarily, and more importantly, the people who walk on the beach are having their wants met for a lower and lower price. Everybody is still happy. At some point, one or more of the vendors may fold, or may go off somewhere else and the whole dynamic will change again. But everybody is still buying what they want for a price they're prepared to pay and the vendors are all still making enough money for it to be worth it for them.

After a while, a devious vendor appears. He starts casting aspersions on existing vendors, claiming that their lemonade made him ill. Or maybe it's true, who knows? We certainly don't! Anyway, he creates "The Guild of Lemonade Vendors", which mandates basic requirements for GLV-approved lemonade, which also means they can charge a higher price.

Customers can now choose from existing lemonades or lemonades that are pricier, may not taste as nice, but are "certified" as good. Vendors can choose to join the Guild (which will probably mean paying something which increases their costs and reduces their margin), create their own "Society of Lemonade Vendors" or remain unaligned and trade on their existing customer base and reputation.

Eventually, this horrific, brutal struggle to deprive the consumer of their hard-earned money will reach moments of stasis, where no-one sees any benefit in entering the market, but then everything will change again. The price of lemons (in itself a free market) could collapse, leading to cheaper lemonade for all or it could rise sharply, making lemonade more expensive.

But at no point does anyone stick a gun at the customer's head saying they have to buy lemonade. The customer may not have enough money on them, and the vendor may or may not be susceptible to haggling or a freebie to win over a repeat customer. It may not be warm enough that people will buy. So other "sweeteners" may be offered to get customers to buy, which may or may not work.

Shit Happens.

All the free market does is measure the prices at which people make mutually beneficial trades, completely removed from the burdens of externally-imposed constraints.

Terrifying, isn't it? And aren't people who believe in the free market heartless, unfeeling bastards?

Labour, as ever the party that champions civil liberties (for @lukeakehurst )

Recent comment on twitter, by Labour NEC member, Luke Akehurst:

Dog Control Orders being discussed now - serious issue in Hackney's parks and open spaces

My rather inevitable response to this further encroachment of the state into things that are really not any of its fucking business was:

Oh for *fuck's* sake. What a load of utter cunt!

Luke then asked:

any particular reason for that reaction? "Status dogs" owned by gang members r serious menace in local parks

Dude! Seriously?

do you *really* think a gang is going to pay any fucking attention?

Luke's devastating response:

they will get fined if they ignore it

Right, so a gang member that is quite happy to own an illegal dog and possibly train it to be an attack dog is going to be so fucking terrified of a doggy ASBO and a fine that he's going to turn into a productive member of society instead?

Really?

Are you fucking serious?

These are the same people who collect ASBO's as a badge of honour. They are absolutely unafraid of the ASBO system. Do you not think that perhaps they may regard a doggy ASBO as a badge of honour for their dogs?

Do you really, REALLY think they're going to give a flying fuck about your stupid fucking nanny state horseshit?

Christ. Is there no end to human stupidity?

Why we won't "run out of oil"

One of the things that baffles me the most about people is this constant fear of "peak oil" or running out of oil completely.

There are masses of oil reserves out there. The USA is apparently possessed of oil reserves that dwarf those of the Middle East. The reason they don't drill for them is that they're in a different kind of rock structure that existing drilling technology doesn't make cost-justifiable. But when the price of oil increases enough to make the investment in improving drilling technology viable, you just know they're going to be all over it. And who knows, it may even lead to cheaper oil.

But I'm fairly sure that at some point, we will actually "run out" of oil. There will be oil out there, but it simply will not be cost-effective to get it out. And then the price of oil will go so high that alternatives will demand to be investigated and found. People are working on alternatives, but with the massive amounts of oil available at cost-effective levels, there's no great incentive to make them happen.

It's not a conspiracy by "Big Oil", it's just rational behaviour. Oil is cheap enough and provides us with highly effective energy. Even if someone did find a way to make cold fusion a reality, we'd have to dick around with our infrastructure so much that it would cost us more than just carrying on with oil, at least in the medium term.

Another thing that I keep getting told is that we need to conserve oil to delay that dark and frightening day from arriving.

This is an irrational point of view. Wealth creation and human progress depends on cheap and readily available energy. The availability of cheap energy has led to a massive improvement in the quality of life all round the planet over the last 100 years.

Trying to curtail energy use simply means that progress will slow or stop and we will never get wealthier which means that we will stagnate where we are now, rather that further improving our quality of life.

That's fine for us if we take a short-term view, but it's a huge blow to those people who are behind us on the development curve. It also predicates a poor future for our children.

Increased wealth and prosperity for the generations to come will also allow them to absorb the costs of any changes to the environment or whatever much more easily than we can, in the same way that we can cope with these much more easily than the Romans or the Victorians did.

You cannot predict what the future will bring. There is no point in throttling our progress for something that may never happen. And throttling our progress might also mean that we never find the way around whatever crisis or cataclysm that may genuinely exist in our future.

While I am happy to endorse careful husbandry of resources and efficiency, the idea of crippling our progress in the name of some vague and unspecified fear of what might happen is stupid.

Barbara Hitler (or something)

Oh dear. The clitterati are up in arms because some charity bint is trying to get druggies to get sterilised to stop having kids that they can't take care of.

I had several nearly identical discussions on twitter with people who were all clearly of the opinion that drug addicts were worthless imbeciles who couldn't be trusted to find their own arseholes with both hands because they were so drug-addled. But at some point, they might turn round and become solid, upstanding fellow-statists who would raise more unquestioning cattle to feed the state, so their balls and ovaries deserved protection.

Now, I think that Barbara Harris's Project Prevention is a pretty disgusting thing. It's judgemental and has some very nasty undertones. But the fact of the matter is that this is all an entirely voluntary transaction. The addict gets some money in exchange for submitting to a (probably reversible) surgical procedure. At no point is anyone threatening the druggie with jail time.

I think it sounds like a patronising, demeaning, almost nasty deal. I wouldn't want to undergo it it. But crucially, I don't think it's my place to tell druggies how to live their lives, nor do I think it's any of my business to tell Barbara Harris how to spend her privately-raised charity money that other people have given freely knowing what the charity's objectives were, nor do I think I have all the answers for other people.

It is, in a sense, like defending neo-nazis' right to talk loads of bullshit. I don't agree with it, but it's their right to say things other people don't like, just like it's my right to call people cunts.

It's people's right to enter into voluntary transactions that they believe are mutually beneficial. And it's nobody else's business but those of the people transacting.

Fuck you and fuck your four-week-old baby, right in the fucking eye

You utter little CUNT:

As you may have heard, last week, 10:10 made a mistake by releasing a short film about cutting carbon which was supposed to be humourous but in the event upset a lot of people. We quickly realised that we had made a serious mistake and took it down from our website within hours.

We also issued a statement apologising but there has subsequently been quite a lot of negative comment, particularly on blogs, and understandable concern from others working hard to build support for action on climate change.

We are also sorry to our corporate sponsors, delivery partners and board members, who have been implicated in this situation despite having no involvement in the film’s production or release

I am very sorry for our mistake and want to reassure you that we will do everything in our power to ensure it does not happen again.

10:10 is a young and creative team but we will learn lessons from this. We are going to investigate what happened, review our processes and procedures, and share the results with our partners. Responsibility for this process is being taken by the 10:10 board of directors.

This media coverage for this film was not the kind of publicity we wanted for the cause of saving the climate, nor for 10:10, and we certainly didn’t mean to do anything to distract from all the efforts of those in other organisations who are working so hard to secure effective action on climate change.

If you have been in touch with us personally about the film, we will be replying to individual emails over the next few days. I’m sorry not to have emailed you about this more quickly - although I have followed developments closely, I’ve been working from home with a four-week-old baby. I thank you for your patience and your support for the 10:10 campaign.

Eugenie Harvey

Director 10:10 UK

hello@1010uk.org

Well, hello, Eugenie.

You fucking little shit-stained cooze. How fucking DARE you fucking imply that it's perfectly fine to kill kids who don't believe in climate change and then have the cock-sucking whore's temerity to fucking schlep your own little bundle of cunt joy into this as a desperate attempt to fucking get the fucking sympathy vote?

You fucking little cock-jockey.

I hope Social Services take your child away for your being unfit to be a human being.

You utter, utter CUNT.

Anti-smokers are fucking stupid

Update: This video was pulled for some reason. Pity really.

Oh, well DONE, Nanny!

Fuck's sake!

"This has got so much public attention that we will have to be outside with her for the foreseeable future because now everyone knows there is a seven-year-old standing on the side of the road every morning.”

Well fucking done, chaps.

Well fucking done.

Shocking, I tell you!

Shocking!

Last week, Thames Valley Safer Roads Partnership said a roadside camera on the A44 in Woodstock had seen an 18.3 per cent increase in speed offences since the switch-off compared to the average number caught this year.

At the same time a radar inside a second camera in Watlington Road, Cowley, registered an 88 per cent rise in offences when compared with figures in 2008 and 2009.

The partnership said the figures for 2010 were not available, as the camera had been switched off due to roadworks.

When the Oxford Mail requested 2008-9 data for the Woodstock camera – to make an equal comparison to the Watlington Road camera – the partnership said the figures were not readily to hand.

Now, the Oxford Mail having obtained the information, the figures actually show speed offences fell by four per cent when comparing the figures since the switch-off to offences in 2008-9.

The fucking police and the fucking scamera operators keep trumpeting all these fucking claims about how much scameras save lives and what utter fucking bastards motorists are.

Well, all I can say is: "Fuck off and die painfully, you lying cunts!"

A spiffing example of why regulations are bad

Here's a thing:

California is having massive budget problems. On an unrelated note, a $578,000,000 school is unveiled in Los Angeles. On another completely unrelated note, the district has a shortfall of $640,000,000. The school comes complete with murals, marble memorial, swimming pool, and public park. This will be the most expensive public school in American history.

Dude, WTF? More than half a billion fucking dollars on a fucking school? Does it have gold plated shitters or what?

And given that the district has an enormous shortfall, was that the best fucking use of taxpayer funding? Of course it fucking wasn't. But guess what? This fucking abortion was a direct consequence of cast-iron regulations created for situation A, that completely fuck up situation B:

By law, these funds could not be used to fund teacher salaries or to back fill budget shortfalls currently being experienced by the District and its [sic] meets the Board goal of relieving overcrowding in all our schools.

So, they couldn't use the funds for a useful purpose because they came with some arbitrary strings attached, and the district has a regulatory requirement to reduce overcrowding. So they pissed out over half a billion US on a fucking school, instead.

Jesus wept.

It's not fucking rocket science

Really?

Fears have been raised that plans to hike the price of alcohol in Rochdale could lead to cheap 'booze cruises' into surrounding towns.

Bloody hell, surely not! Stop the presses, we have an economic genius here. If you live on the margins of somewhere cuntish, you may go somewhere less cuntish to do your self-harm.

And of course, when you've got an industrial-size bottle of vodka that you're carrying around the town centre, that's going to lead to a vast improvement in yobbish behaviour, isn't it?

So what will happen is that Manchester will lean on the surrounding towns and eventually it will spread because a bunch of prodnose council CUNTS think that the answer to any problem involves banning, taxing or both if at all possible.

Motherfucking scumbags.

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.

Global warming leads to increased sea ice?

Hm.

Chop CEOP?

I see some bunch of dickwad prodnoses has made the news:

A REPORT BUTTON is now available on Facebook for teenagers after the social notworking outfit capitulated due to nine months of pressure that included a vociferous campaign on its own website.

The situation started to heat up for Mark Zuckerberg's site in November last year when the UK's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) started calling for Facebook, and Myspace, to adopt a button after Bebo did, that would let children report contact from suspected dangerous individuals. In April Facebook told CEOP that it could not come to an agreement to adopt or test the adoption of the report button.

In response to this, the campaign page eventually had over 3,500 members and CEOP said that it also had the support of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Childline, Beatbullying and the Association of Chief Police Officers.

Woo. What a fucking recommendation. The NSPCC, Childline, Beatbullying AND the ACPO? Every single one of those organisations is brimful of bossy, know-it-all cunts and if I was king for a day, every single fucking one of them would be burned down and the earth they walked on salted. Plus, their heads would be cut off and a stake driven through their hearts.

Just to be on the safe side.

There's something about CEOP that leaves me feeling very uncomfortable. It's not just that they appear to be the paramilitary wing of the NSPCC, an organisation that I would cheerfully douse with petrol if they went up in flames. I can't find any evidence of their funding, but the whole outfit screams "fakecharity".

They brag about having "safeguarded" 624 children over the last 4 years. What does that mean? The website talks about 47 specific cases where "intensive image analysis" resulted in kids being identified and somehow rescued.

I realise this is going to sound incredibly callous, especially coming from a parent who loves his kid and is horrendously protective, but how much does this little-known bunch of media whores actually cost us? I mean, they're basically bullying social media outfits into giving them free advertising by placing a fucking logo for free on every page. Their website has a whole swathe of professionally produced video clippage available to increase their profile. PDFs of pointless "scoping studies" and vaguely alarming assertions are blandly made. All very professionally produced with your money and mine.

If this wasn't all sitting in .gov.uk and .police.uk domains, I'd swear it was just another thieving quango pissing our money away on overpaid ex-policemen and other assorted oxygen thieves.

Do we really need another "partnership network" of 46,000 people to tell us that sometimes shit can happen on the internet? Is there really that much paedogeddon going on that Bebo, MySpace and Facebook all have to have a panic button?

There's a much better way of controlling what happens to kids on the internet, it's much more comprehensive and much safer. It doesn't require giving yet another bunch of hectoring prodnoses moral authority over our every move.

How about parents take responsibility for their kids and what they get up to online?

Simple. Doesn't cost the taxpayer shit. Helps build the family's relationships.

Plus, it gets to keep another bunch of self-aggrandizing media whores out of a job.

The fucking cunts.

Oh noes! Think of the children!

Could it be that this monster is being repealed? Possibly. But...

It is now going to be stopped entirely, with a review set to create a much more slimmed down version of the vetting scheme.

You'll forgive me if I wait and see how slimmed down it turns out to be before I crack open the bubbly, won't you?