@tomharrismp - talking out of his arse

Again:

But blogs are, on the whole, amateur affairs, offering plenty of subjective opinion and the occasional interesting fact, spun in a particular direction. The USP of any newspaper worth the name is journalism.

That’s why I read the Daily Mirror: straight-up factual journalism with not a hint of party bias.

Plus, of course, 95% of a newspaper’s content isn’t just regurgitated Associated Press or Reuters stuff.

Yes, Tom, you’re bang on the money here.

As ever.

Darwin Awards 2008 ...

... the results are out.

Something that is missing from all the papers?

I dunno. I've read all about this 45% rate for people on £150K per annum and a temporary reduction in VAT which is going to be followed by a massive spike in VAT. And I have to ask, what the fuck is going on?

Why is no-one in the media saying the obvious? 45% on £150K pa will become 45% on £125K pa will become 50% on £100K pa will become 60% on £75K pa and pretty fucking soon, we're all going be on 85% on £40K pa. 45% on £150K pa is also going to amount to the square root of fuck all compared to the amount Gorgon is pissing away like a sailor in port.

And Timmy, although he's talking about the LibDumb nodding dog Vince Cable, makes another key point:

Except, you see, those bankers ain’t gonna be making those high incomes any more, because there ain’t no profits to pay them from. So what he’s actually suggesting is that we should raise taxes on those who are still creating value, those with high incomes not in the banking sector.

So, we're not "punishing the bankers", we're punishing everybody left behind who is still earning money from creating value. This is just another lurch to the left, heading for that glorious socialist workers' paradise that Badger Brows (formerly known as "that bearded Trot" who even Neil fucking Kinnock didn't want as an MP) and the great flunking cyst have always wanted.

A bearded Trot, much, much earlier

I can't remember where I read it, but someone kept on banging on about how Naomi Klein was right and right-wing governments use crises to force unwelcome legislation upon us. Well, she was half-right. Only this time it's Naomi's beloved left-wing that is arsefucking us.

And boy, is this going to be ugly.

Stick to the script, Mr Bond ...

I always wonder why actors get accorded so much respect. Daniel Craig had, until now, escaped my attention, because he stuck to acting. But no, that wasn't enough:

Now that the United States has a black President-elect, the world could be ready for a black Bond, 007 actor Daniel Craig has said.

Yeah, why not make Bond a lesbian, too?

But yeah, you could just ignore it, couldn't you. I have a bit more of a problem with this:

"I've always been a fan of Obama. The political ideas that have emerged from his speeches seem to me to be genuine."

What ideas, Daniel? Because no-one with half a brain seems to know what "hope and change" means in real terms. It's a bit like the Indians being told to "endeavour to persevere" in The Outlaw Josey Wales. It sounds spiffy, but it means the square root of fuck all.

"Obama would be the better Bond, because, if he's true to his word, he'd be willing to quite literally look the enemy in the eye and go toe-to-toe with them," he told American magazine Parade.

Quite unlike McCain, who actually did look the enemy in the eye and went toe-to-toe with them.

Flatulent cunt, stick to someone else's words. Yours make you look like a complete fool.

Darling declares war on City's risk culture

Via Samizdata, this:

The Chancellor pledged to clamp down on the City's culture of rewarding undue risk-taking and will soon reveal plans to tighten market regulations.

For fuck's sake. Meanwhile, in the real world:

The fact that insurance companies refused to insure property located on storm-wracked coasts is not an instance of market failure. A market failure supposedly occurs when the price of goods and services do not reflect the true costs of producing and consuming those goods and services. That's clearly not what happened here. The market is practically shouting at people, "Don't build something you can't afford to lose where hurricanes periodically crash ashore."

Instead the state "insurance" scheme is an example of government failure which occurs when a government intervention causes a more inefficient allocation of goods and resources than would occur without that intervention. In this case, it's the government that's telling people that it's OK to build in dangerous areas and then not charging them enough for the "insurance."

In what way does the cunt think that businesses are keen to fire up risky ventures? Businesses would rather have a sure thing any day of the week. All this fucking around with derivatives and the like stems from regulation stopping businesses from offloading their risk in a transparent manner, so they create new financial instruments that bundle up the risk in obscure and exciting ways and sell it off.

So what is old badger brows going to do? He's going to create more regulation, leading to even more complex derivatives, leading to more risk-hiding, leading to more speculation, leading to ...

Here we go again!

Some days, it just doesn't help me to read the papers. Remember this cunt?



Well, guess what?

In a further disclosure from a leaked letter to the Prime Minister from the Home Secretary, it is proposed that police community support officers (PCSOs), who receive less training and are paid less than full police officers, be used as a cost-effective way to fight the increase in crime that it predicts will result from the economic downturn.

Can you imagine having PCSO Fuckwit above doing actual police work with his capacious knowledge of the law and his fantastic social skills?

Jesus wept, we are SO fucked.

Pass the beta blockers ...

I can't find the words to convey my amazement:

AN SNP COUNCILLOR CAUGHT ON camera firing an AK-47 assault rifle was yesterday spared expulsion from the party by Nationalist officials.

The SNP disciplinary committee rejected dumping Jahangir Hanif, who also passed the deadly weapon to his children, in favour of a two-month suspension.

In a bizarre turn of events, the hearing nearly collapsed after SNP bosses bungled the initial complaint made to the committee.

Tory MSP Bill Aitken said: "Maybe the SNP think this is an adequate disposal, but frankly most people will think this man should not be holding public office. His conduct is a disgrace to his electorate."

The probe into Hanif's conduct followed footage released earlier this month that showed the 46-year-old Glasgow councillor firing an assault rifle while on holiday in Pakistan in December 2005.

The revelations were made worse after it emerged that Hanif had passed the weapon to several of his children, including a daughter who was five at the time.

Another of his daughters, 17-year-old Noor, said she and her siblings fired the gun.

Hanif was immediately suspended by the party and an investigation was launched by the Nationalists' disciplinary committee, which responded to a complaint by SNP national secretary Duncan Ross.

What?

What?????

Truly: WHAT THE FUCK???

Even more: WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK?????????

I've read the article several times now, and I cannot see what it is that this man has done to merit a suspension. He fired a gun. Whoop-de-fucking-doo. So what? He gave it to his kids to show them, including (shock! horror!) a five-year-old. His daughter also shot the gun. And?

Was anyone hurt? Did kittens die? Did little baby Jesus get a cattle prod shoved up his jacksy?

I can't even begin to explain my incomprehension as to how any of this was any fucking business of the SNP or what gives them the right to punish Jahangir Hanif for simply shooting a few rounds with an AK47.

Can somebody please explain it to me?

Oh, and Bill Aitken: you're a fucking pointless twat. Help yourself to a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut, you pathetic excuse for a human being.

It's all a conspiracy, I tells ya!

Over at the aptly named "Liberal Conspiracy", Sunny Hundal froths at the mouth:

As its a slow news day, I might as well highlight this blog post at the Guido Fawkes blog. Paul Staines asks: ‘Is Brown bonkers?’, adding later on that:

It is low politics to hurl cheap abuse at opponents, but this is not borne of malice towards Brown, Guido feels like the boy who pointed at the naked emperor and said what everyone was too embarrassed to say.

Erm, yeah right. He’s as concerned about Brown’s sanity as I am about trainspotting. What Staines is doing, and what the political right excels at, is starting and constantly promoting malicious narratives. Their hope is that it becomes a talking point for the mainstream media and that is how he becomes framed. The Republicans in the United States have been great at this for decades.

One inch to the right of this, and two inches down, we have a comment on this story at the Liberal Conspiracy:

McCain: 'Off-balance and dangerous' by, er, Sunny Hundal.

Michael Tomasky is right, John McSame shouldn’t be near the US presidency.

Are you promoting a malicious narrative, Sunny?

Just asking is all.

Update: Just spotted "Boris: The gaffopedia" Clearly, no "malicious narrative" here! (Even though I think Boris is a bit of a disappointment, myself.)

A Basic Requirement for a Libertarian Government: THINK!

The papers are full of this:

A stark warning that Britain’s worsening economy will cause “difficult social issues” heaped fresh pressure on Gordon Brown yesterday, as more members of his Government broke ranks to demand a windfall tax.

The Prime Minister faces the prospect of the resignation of at least one ministerial aide if he fails to impose a new levy on energy companies’ profits, The Times has learnt.

There are just so many things wrong with this, I can't be sure I'll get them all:

1. What did the government expect to happen to energy prices in their quest for green-ness? The whole idea of their green taxes are to make energy more expensive so that people use less of it. So why moan when the price goes up? What did they expect was going to happen?

2. The government has already already netted more than £1 billion in extra taxes due to the increase prices. It seems a bit fucking churlish to demand some more.

3. The windfall taxes will steal from the businesses' capacity for investment in other things that might help energy costs, such as research into alternative energy sources, exploratory drilling, etc., etc.

4. Windfall taxes damage business confidence overall. Why would I execute on this brilliant new business strategy when all it's going to do is wind up getting the arse taxed off it?

5. The "outrageous profits" are not really outrageous at all. As a Return on Investment percentage, they're pretty shit, really. It's only because there are so many consumers that the number looks big. The costs are commensurately eyewatering, indeed, more so.

6. The government already takes more tax out of the energy companies than the energy companies take profits. If it were at all possible, I'd be looking to move my business elsewhere, where the tax regime was sane.

I swear, these people really do seem to think there is never an unintended consequence and there is also an infinite supply of cash for their latest wizard wheeze. Bunch of wizard's sleeves, more like.

My comments do not accurately reflect my views

The legendary (or should that be "bell-end-ary"?) Gerry Sutcliffe (proclaimer of the famous quote above) has, in truly Stalinist fashion, decreed that "it is vital" that Team GB reaches the target of 41 medals from the Beijing Olympics.

"That is a serious target," said Sutcliffe. "We want it to be achieved."

What a complete poltroon! Does he really think that his demands are going to be worth shit come the 100 metres, or the javelin? Does he really think his diktat is going to motivate any of the athletes?

Hey Gerry! We're not a Soviet state just yet!

Cunt.

PS Lay off the fucking pies.

Update: The Croydonian does the math. What a strange man he is!

Ministers are idiots, it's official!

From the Telegraph:

Ministers claim that backdated tax increases on cars registered since March 2001 will make drivers of existing cars trade in the most polluting vehicles for more environmentally-friendly models.

So they're completely oblivious to the fact that most of the "carbon footprint" of a car comes from its manufacture and disposal and that the "greenest" thing you can do is to keep a car on the road for as long as possible.

I despair, I really do.

Dear Gordon...

I see you're planning to deliver a "windfall tax" on those "greedy" energy companies. It may not have occurred to you, despite your immense financial genius, that those energy companies actually make fuck-all per customer, so accusations that they're ripping people off are typical, muddled-headed leftist thinking: "Oh, they made a huge profit, therefore they are gouging customers."

Actually, they already make less out of delivering their energy to customers than the government does, much like with petrol, where something like 75% of the petrol price is actually some tax or other.

Hm, so who is actually gouging the consumer here?

Anyway, Gordon, I was wondering if I might make a small suggestion to you: in these challenging times of economic woe (obviously all caused by American incompetence and absolutely nothing to do with your own stewardship of the economy) why don't you just try spending a little bit less, rather than dreaming up new and innovative ways of sucking the last 2p coin out of my threadbare pockets? How about, instead of you taxing some fucker (which I will wind up paying for eventually) and giving the money to some other fucker (because somehow these handouts never come my way), why don't you stop pissing fucking money up the wall on gold-plated EU legislation, massive parliamentarian salaries and pensions, stupid government programs, the dole, massive bureacracies, potato agencies, regional development agencies and all the other myriad expressions of your wasteful socialist fucking stupidity and charge us all a bit less tax?

This has a massive benefit: it benefits everybody (except stupid government wastrels) but it benefits the poor and the needy the most.

It's simple, too. Even you should be able to work it out, but you probably can't because you're a socialist. You like to stick your greedy, fat, little fingers into the pie, you like to chip away at everyone's slice in the name of "fairness", not noticing how much of the pie you've wasted when you finally get round to washing them, possibly because you've been licking away at the tasty morsels that were stuck there.

Socialist redistribution just doesn't work, Gordon, it just leads to waste. It's not fucking rocket science, the proof is all around you. Half of tax money is not spent on making things better, it's just pissed out on the machinery of state. Imagine how much better off we'd all be if you just conceded defeat and started shutting down all this waste. Encourage people to achieve something, rather than massaging statistics by stuffing people into non-jobs that suck the life out of them and out of the economy.

You've had 10 lucky years when economic growth hid the real consequences of your stupidity. Be a man, Gordon, admit your policies have failed. Admit that tax and spend is a complete disaster and that the only way out is to stop trying to micro-manage us all.

Write down a list of all state-funded agencies (I think there are about 900) in alphabetical order and withdraw government funding from every second one. Just do it. You'll notice a massive swing towards fiscal balance. Raise the tax threshold so that no-one pays any tax until they earn £20,000 per annum. Exempt OAPs and people under 18 from income tax entirely.

Then, in a year's time, do the list thing again, and withdraw support from another 225 agencies. Raise the tax threshold to £25,000 per annum. Disband the disastrous Child Benefits Agency and the insane and incompetent Tax Credit system. Reduce corporation tax by 5%.

If you announce, just before the 2010 election, that you will be a) withdrawing statefunding from the remaining state-funded agencies; b) raising the tax threshold to £30,000 and c) reducing corporation taxes by another 2.5%, I'm pretty sure you'll get re-elected.

People might even get to like you.

Come on, Gordon: you're fucked anyway, why not risk it all on some truly radical thinking?

Digital Media's Top 10

I see the Gruaniuad has its finger firmly on the pulse again. According to them, the ten most influential people in the digital world are:

1. Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google. (Obo rating: fair enough.)
2. Steve Jobs of Apple. (Obo rating: bit tenuous, but I'll go with it.)
3. Steve Ballmer of Microsoft. (Obo rating: you're having a fucking laugh, aren't you? How can you take a cunt like this seriously?)
4. Ashley Highfield of Project Kangaroo. (Obo rating: Give me a break!)
5. Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post. (Obo rating: OK, I'll go with that.)
6. Joanna Shields of AOL. (Obo rating: Who???)
7. Guido Fawkes, scalper of trough-snufflers. (Obo rating: Yep.)
8. Erik Huggers of the BBC. (Obo rating: Who???)
9. Emily Bell of the Graun. (Obo rating: Brown-nosing the boss? Never fucking heard of her.)
10. Robert Scoble of the Scobleizer blog. (Obo rating: Who???)

It's apparent to me that the Graun has entirely missed what the real world is doing and is up itself along with all the new media luvvies, and / or it's aggravated with people who command massive amounts of online power, like Matt Drudge or Perez Hilton.

I mean, for fuck's sake, Ashley Highfield? Although he's ex-BBC and has all the right-on credentials the Graun would obviously salivate over, Project Kangaroo is not exactly going to change fucking anything.

Emily Bell? Jesus, the Graun can't even keep the news website up without regular fuckups.

Erik Huggers? Stop fucking wasting license payers' money on wanky web shit and produce some decent programs, you cock-snaffling cuntwaft.

Joanna Shields is in because she got lucky, not because she knew what she was doing.

And Robert Scoble ... well, yawn, fucking yawn. Why not Cringely or someone who actually knows stuff and doesn't just wank over the latest toys? 87 posts about his fucking 3G iPhone, for the love of Christ!

I'm pleased to see that the Graun is as accurate in new technology as it is in everything else. Apart from the most obvious, self-evident truths, if the Graun says "go forward", do a U-turn and go the other way.