Tax

My friend, colleague and scary clown Obnoxio posted recently a clear view of the way forward regarding taxation.

Without permission, I reproduce some of it here, because that's what bloggers seem to do:

• No tax is payable on the first £12,500 of individual earnings (including Citizens Income).
• Individual tax is 20% above £12,500. No deductions, no expenses, no shit.
• Corporation tax is 1% of income earned in the UK, no exemptions, no allowances, no deductible expenses, no fucking incentives, no shit.
• National Insurance is 5% on employers, 5% on employees, also above £12,500.*
• There are no personal tax credits. There is no dole. There is no income support.
• Every UK citizen above 16 gets an income of £50 a week. Pensioners get an extra £50 a week per "family" i.e., single pensioners get a total of £100 a week, married pensioners get a total of £150 a week (until they've been rolled off the ponzi scheme, anyway - the state pension scheme will be closed to new entrants.)
• The first child in a family gets the family an allowance of £50 a week until their 16th birthday, when the kid get the money. Subsequent children get fuck all until they are 16.

Sorry, scary clown. I nicked it.

It's quite good, although I see why these chancellors have such a problem. If I was the proper chancellor, I would have a spreadsheet which, when I put into it "20% tax on earnings above £12,500", would spit out a figure showing how much I pocket. I imagine it is quite a lot.

But I conducted an experiment yesterday. And then I asked some other people to conduct it, and I hope that with such a vast sample I can formulate some figures to back up my hypothesis.

Here is my experiment.

As you go through your daily life, take note of what is around you. What you like, what you don't like. Discard anything that is paid for by real people, such as the gardens you walk/cycle/drive past, the rivers, lakes, canals. Include anything that is paid for by the "state", such as roads, schools, hospitals.

Add up what the "state" funded stuff should cost. Not what it does cost, because that's a function of the inefficiency of this rotten government and their hare-brained schemes.

Add to this figure Obo's nominal £50-a-week incentive to get a job payment multiplied by the number of people who can't/won't/prefer not to get a job, plus the very generous pension options Obo suggests.

Now divide into that figure the number of people who have been lucky enough to get a job.

Take the total amount of money over £12,500 pp earned by the lucky jobful people. If this unholy amount of money isn't greater than the total amount required, then we really are in deep shit. However, it won't be. It will be far more. The percentage of the total amount sloshing around represented by the amount required will give you the real tax rate.

That's how much tax should be. Alternatively, abandon this silly idea of income tax and use things like road tax (VEL) to pay for it. Expect people with children to contribute to their education. Stuff the daft idea of everyone going to Uni to get a degree in some old bollocks that they didn't need one for before this band of idiots came to power.

There is the small matter of a huge loan left outstanding. I suggest that, as I was never a party to that loan, and probably nor were you, then we should put the onus on paying that back squarely on the shoulders of the idiots responsible for getting it in the first place. I will do the requisite negotiations, if necessary. It won't take long.

I would dearly love to get my hands on that spreadsheet. Anyone got a copy? Anyone prepared to help make one with the help of data which I believe is available freely from the ONS?

If so, I will make an app for everyone to use, on t'internets, where you can put in your own numbers and see if we can make any sense of what's happening. 

I promise.

Toe

As both of my readers know, I really have nothing to say. I only blog to get it off my chest and in the hope that I will elicit a response if I'm reading over 360 on the moral compass.

I do this because I sometimes think that I'm the only sane one in this zoo.

Sadly, neither of my readers has pulled me up even though I have made a point of being politically incorrect. So I thought I should try harder.

Multiculturalism


I don't like it. It doesn't work. I can't remember when it started being introduced. And I'm entitled to my right not to embloodybrace it, whatever Trevor Macdonald says.

I know, because I can read, that many, many years ago there was slavery. It was started off most recently by some pretty savage white people, mainly Americans, who discovered places where there were not-white people, and because these Americans (who obviously had just been invented and ousted half a dozen redskins) were pretty much self-delusional Godbotherers then obviously the black people were inferior and it followed that they could be made into slaves without upsetting the Divine Plan. It's actually happened since B.C.

More recently, Britain, because we were God's chosen people, had an empire and basically took over anywhere we wanted, such as half of the West Indies, India and most of the rest of the slightly-less-civilised world than Britain itself.

In more recent history, which is the bit when I started remembering rather than reading, we had an influx of non-slaves from these places. India, the Windies. They were referred to by indigenous Britons as "bus drivers".

I don't fully understand the reason why they came. Well, I understand why they wanted to come - because of the "better life (TM)". But I don't fully understand the reason why we (we being the indigenous Brits) wanted them to come. I suspect it was because the indigenous Brits had enough work to go round and we didn't want to do some of the jobs. In fact, I'm 99% certain of this.

There were quite a lot of indigenous Brits at the time who still had the attitude that they were not the same colour as us, or that they had bigger noses, or bigger other things (apparently). So we found words for them such as nigger and coon. These words were, and are, quite offensive to the non-indigenous colourful new Brits, and I don't think it's a bad thing at all that they've gone out of everyday conversational use.

Of course, Britain is a free country and, because they could, the new breed of non-indigenous naturalised Brits bred. Breeding is fun. And so a new generation of indigenous, colourful Brit was born. Now, anyone who has a problem with that is a racist. I don't like racism. I sort of understand it, as I sort of understand most things in my own small way, but I don't subscribe to it.

We have an act - a law, called the Race Relations Act. It was enacted in 1976 and states that it is against the law to discriminate against people on the grounds of race, colour, nationality or ethnic and national origin. It is a Good Law, I think, and stops the driver refusing to let people on the bus because they came from somewhere other than Britain, or because they are brown, yellow, black or green. Or white, for that matter. We shouldn't need a law like that, but we do, because some of us are Bad People.

Since then there have been amendments to it, notably the one in 2000 which says that public bodies must also obey that law. We really didn't need that one, because all laws should apply equally to the person or the public body, and that's half the reason why we're in the state we're in. However, it doesn't matter.

Still later, in 2006, we made another law which is called the Racial and Religious Hatred Act, which states that it is against the law to incite hatred against someone because of their religion, or lack of religion. That went without saying anyway, but NuLab like making laws, being run by lawyers as they are, so we got another law.

Britain has a culture. Even bits of Britain, such as England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own cultures, or sub-cultures. And even further still, bit of England have their own cultures, places such as Norfolk, Cornwall, Northumbria - all slightly different in customs and accents, local foods and so on.

I like to visit other places in Britain to sample their cultures, which are often endearing and quaint. Sadly, because of the need to have everything on tap today, Ginster's lorries are tramping up and down the motorways delivering pasties and, for God's sake, ready-made sandwiches; Rodda's clotted cream is available from Waitrose; haggis can be bought all the year round (and don't try to tell me that McSween didn't change their recipe this year), and my local pub sells real ales from breweries from as far afield as St Austell, Southwold, Edinburgh and all points in between, so I don't have to travel anywhere any more to get the taste of Britain.

I also like to visit other countries, such as France and Spain, and they have their own cultures, quite different from ours in that they even speak a completely different language (even though French was the main language in England for nearly 400 years). But now I can buy membrillo from Waitrose, along with a selection of continental cheese including some obscure ones from El Pais Vasco, so really if I just signed up to a French or Spanish class once a week I wouldn't have to go abroad at all.

I haven't been to India. Someone I know went there and said that you had to ignore the poverty and begging and suchlike, and I don't think I could, so won't bother going. And I don't want to to go to a tourist resort such as Goa, because I want to see culture. And I can get a pretty damned good curry from a couple of places within a couple of miles of me. And I don't much like full-on sun, it burns.

Now, I'm happy that places around this small planet have developed in different ways and have naturally developed different cultures. It is charming, and it is natural, and it is to be encouraged.

I could go to Spain, and speak Spanish, and see bullfighting (in the very few places it still exists). And I do. I can go to France, and speak French, and eat ridiculously and cruelly fattened goose livers made into a pate, and steak from a horse, fresh from the Chevalier. And I do. I can go to a lot of other places and do things which I am not allowed to do here, such as smoke in a pub. And I'm going to do that next week, in Belgium, and I'm going to fail miserably to speak Flemish, because I can't, but I'm going to get the best chips ever. And later, I'm going to do the same in Germany, and fail to speak German, but I'm going to drink steins of their beer and eat proper pretzels.

And then I'm going to come back. Back to good old Blighty which, despite the best efforts of the present administration, is still the country in which I was born, and always will be. And I love her dearly.

And anyone who has come here to live, or to visit is most welcome. All I ask is that you embrace her culture. Her culture encompasses speaking English, as that is the language spoken here. If you can't speak our lanuage, and there's a pretty good chance I can't speak yours, then we'll try to understand you. But don't expect it as a right. Her culture encompasses free speech, eating meat if one wants to, making ones own decision if they don't hurt anyone else, and a penchant (good Lord, is that a French word?) for real ale, pork scratchings and custard or gravy on everything.

So, dear visitor, embrace that.

Or fuck off.

I mean that most sincerely.

Now, moral compass watchers (both of you), am I right or wrong?

Priorities

I'm quite interested in science. Quite interested; that means I like the pretty bits and the noisy bits. I'm fairly disinterested in the maths behind it all because my brain is far too feeble to start taking that lot in as well.

I think that knowing something about science helps to put things in perspective. Professor Stephen Hawkin puts forward some very sneaky stuff in his books, my favorite of those being the Brief History of Time.

Hawkin's small volume explains in some detail (without the dull bits) about particles and waves and black holes and dimensions and string theory and everything else, really. It even tells of God (but you have to read to the end).

There is a very interesting hypothesis in it, the name of which I can't remember, but basically it says that owing to the universe's expansion, the cleverer man gets at finding out about stuff, the further away it sneaks. Hawkin said that better than I did, so read the book if you haven't already.

So, if we had invented the astronomical space-mounted super-duper radioscope 100 years ago, we could possibly have collected information telling us how the universe (that's a word meaning everything) started from a bubble of nothing (that's the opposite of everything, nothing, a perfect vacuum, fuck all) about the size of a penny. It might have told us where the penny came from, too, that one has always eluded me. Or how nothing can be the size of anything. But, unluckily for us, and luckily for God, we only just invented the superscope and the bit we wanted to look at has snuck away just in time, to stop us knowing the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

Fascinating. And what is even more sneaky is that the further away the expanded bit of universe gets, the faster it goes away. So fat, in fact, that the rules don't apply any more; the bit of universe farthest away from us but that we know exists is moving away at around twice the speed of light, and there is no reason to believe that as it gets further away still the faster it goes still, ad infinitum. It might beg the question "Did God had to change the rules as He went along?"

That boggles my mind - I don't know about yours.

So, yes, I am very interested in science.

But then it gets out of hand. Someone has decided to make a hole the size of Kent under half of Switzerland and a few other places. They have then diverted the efforts of a great many scientists in building a machine which, if you chuck particles round it fast enough (only around 185,000 miles a second though, not properly fast like the edges of the universe) and bang them into each other, might reveal another particle, a boson, which might give a clue to what happened millions and millions and millions of years ago, when the penny went BANG!

But then again, it might not.

If it does, it will be the next step in yet another journey at the end of which we may find that the goalposts have moved again. If, eventually, they can wallop the particles around accelerated to an energy of 14 TeV (Tera Electron-volts, or 14,000,000,000,000 Electron-volts) which sounds very impressive but is around the energy of motion of the fly buzzing round your head, a special kind of boson, called the Higgs boson (named after a bloke called Higgs), which will make another equation possible, then the rest of science can carry on looking for the next piece of the jigsaw.

Maybe. Not very likely.

Now, were this shebang, including scientists, money and effort, to be channelled into finding a cure for cancer, or to aid the starving in Africa, or something, I could see the point. But for this, I cannot.

And that boggles my mind, too.

Clash

I understand the Titans were clashing last night. I didn't watch it. One reason I didn't watch it is that I haven't got a telly. Another is that the pub doesn't have one either. Other reasons I didn't watch it include the fact that I am completely disinterested in what any of them have to say, I don't much like the look of at least two of them, they were inevitably going to spout the party line, and they are all as predictable as the nighttime being dark.

So, am I qualified to comment on their performance?

Yes, I am. Because I could do better. I could single-handedly clear up the deficit in four years, whilst keeping all real services running at least as well as they do now.

I think any of them could, too. And if they had proper bollocks instead of the shrivelly things they do have, they would do that.

"How, Marv?" I hear a few of you cry.

"Easy," I say.

All you need to do is to stop wasting the vast amounts we waste, say by cutting all the handouts for being pregnant, having a kid etc, get rid of the stupid tax credits and make it so if you're a lazy, thick (either or both) cunt you get paid accordingly. Decimate the top tiers of the civil service, let them get a job if they can - if they can't, then they are clearly unemployable. Negotiate with the silly sods who lent you all this deficit in the first place and tell them, as I would tell a creditor, that they will be lucky to get ten cents on the dollar, and if they don't like it they can whistle. Trust me, such an approach works. They won't lend you any more, but then you won't need it.

Simples. I'd vote for someone with a plan like that. I suspect some of you would, too.

So why don't they do it?

Same reason as I won't become the chancellor. The sponging, lazy and thick, together with the top tier, would not vote for it. And they vastly outnumber the honest, hard-working and useful.

QED

Who?

Guess.

He launched a new economy.

The catastrophic failure of a certain sector caused widespread panic.

A campaign ensued to rid government of corruption.

He made a pact with other countries, collectively.

Antagonism followed.

Who is it?

Him

Did you guess?

Tough

I liked John Wayne. He was the ultimate screen cowboy; tough, cool.

He had many sayings. One of them was this:

"Life is tough. It's even tougher when you're stupid."

This is a story I am going to have difficulty relating, because I need to change a few facts in order to protect a certain party. However, the facts I will change are immaterial, they are things like names and places.

A teacher friend of mine told me about little Johnny, who is in her class. Little Johnny would like to have ADHD but hasn't. So he behaves in a reasonably vile way, as he knows that he can get away with it. For anyone to do anything about his abysmal behaviour would be to invite charges of victimisation under the laws of (in)equality.

Little Johnny is what I would call a pain. He goes out of his way to be a nuisance and he is a drain on the teaching resource, spoiling it for the other kids.

It turns out that another chap who was with us at the time knows this kid, as his lad plays football with him. And the nuisance kid has eleven siblings. Chap explained "They just like children a lot. The father is a dustman, and does taxi driving as well. They don't sponge off the state. But if course, they do get tax credits."

Indeed. Apparently all of the offspring are in the same mould. I think I would have been bent out of shape at that age had I realised that my parents were completely barking, as well. And they don't sponge off the state because the state tells them that it their right to claim all this money, for having twelve kids, but it is not sponging.

There is something horribly wrong with this. Big John was wrong. Life is much easier when you're stupid, in NuLab Britain.

And every single one of these chavs-to-be will be able to vote in the near future.

Please put me right, tell me I'm being somethingist here.

Compo

Because I actually, for the first time I think, got over 100 readers yesterday (mainly 'cos I slipped a link into one of my comments over on the Raccoon's blog), I felt that it might be time to venture into competition territory, as an experiment.

And here is my feeble idea for a competition, and a suitable prize.

The most STUPID, POINTLESS or UNENFORCEABLE LAW (or statute) that has been dreamed up by this current administration (that's under Blair or Brown) since they got in.

Post a link to it for all to see.

I've got two up my sleeve and they're pretty hard to beat, but I'm not going to say until Monday.

The PRIZE is a decent-sized (a staggering ONE KG)  box of Belgian chocs which I will bring back with me when I visit the land of the ungoverned and ungovernable in the next couple of weeks. Promise. Cross my heart and call me Playtex.

Now go on, you know you want to. The Editor's decision is final (ME).

Straw

A little straw poll. I can't do polls, because I am crap at it. So you have to pretend.

Pretend these boxes are real and you can tick them.

o I AM GOING TO VOTE LABOUR BECAUSE I BELIEVE THAT THEY ARE THE RIGHT PARTY TO MEND THE ECONOMY.

o I AM NOT GOING TO VOTE LABOUR BECAUSE IT IS CLEAR TO ME THAT THEY HAVE NO IDEA ABOUT ECONOMICS.

Now, Labour voters, those that always vote Labour, the ones who would vote for a donkey if it sported a red rosette, will press button A. I can't find any of those, so please, if you know someone, send them a link to this so they can vote.

Now, Labour voters, please take a look at this graph. It shows the net debt of the country over the years. Debt is not GOOD, it is where the country OWES money and that money comes from YOU.

UP is BAD in this graph. More UP means more DEBT which is BAD. Of course, there was the global banking crisis which was definitely NOT Labour's fault. They said so.

Being fair, when Gordon, the champion of Keynesian economics, and self-admitted innumerate, was in number 11, things went swimmingly. MARVEL at the FALL in debt of nearly 50 billion POUNDS, in the early years. What MAGIC he must have DONE!

Then consider the more sobering fact that, at that time, he sold over half of the country's GOLD reserves at rock-bottom prices, raising £3.5 BILLION, and had the WINDFALL from the auction of 3G licences of £22 BILLION (obviously paid for by everyone with a mobile phone). And then it all got WORSE again.

And it has got WORSE ever SINCE.

Now, dear Labour voter. It is NOT too LATE to change your MIND.

Be honest. Did you initially tick the FIRST box?

Will you now tick the SECOND box?

Or would you like a third box?

o I HAVE READ AND UNDERSTAND THIS BUT I WILL STILL VOTE LABOUR BECAUSE I AM IN FACT COMPLETELY BLOODY STUPID.

There is no hope, is there?

Still, if you want to, put the reason why in the comment box below. That's DOWN there. I am all for FAIRNESS and EQUALITY.

(the capitals are so Labour voters will be able to read it, like in the papers)

Vote

I might have worked it out.

There are all these opinion polls saying that Labour are catching up with the Tories.

Other bloggers are saying it's because Cameron's an arse. It might be, but it seems a bit coincidental that just after Cameron gave what I believe was his best performace so far, and which must have been watched by million, after the Badger's pathetic attempt at a budget (as witnessed by every single MSM channel in the known universe), the gap between the Tories and the Idiots narrowed to something approximating to jack shit.

This means one of two things:

1. Something the Badger said spurred the swingers Labour's way, or
2. Something Cameron said spurred the swingers Labour's way.

In between wetting myself at the comments coming up on the live feed kindly supplied by the Eye, Gotty and Subrosa, I listened to the budget speech. Apart from making cider illegal, it didn't say anything. Fuel up by next to nothing, easy to do because it's just been hiked by a huge amount anyway. Beer and wine up by next to nothing over the rate of inflation, the proletariat don't care because they don't know what inflation is anyway, and hald of them can't add one and three and get a reliable answer. Half a dozen useless jobs cut in Whitehall, who cares?

Then I listened to Cameron's speech, which I thought was quite fiery, spoiled only by the lolling, grinning idiot on his right. He said that the budget was a load of old tosh, which was correct.

Then the poll came. It amazed even me, and I am hardly ever amazed any more.

And then I realised what has happened. It is ordained. It is the plan. They have won. The social engineers have really done a mind job on the populace. 

When you eliminate the impossible then what remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

I for one cannot bear the thought of another five years of this. The only thing I can say with conviction is that it is not too late. It is possibly too late to do anything through the accepted, or normal, channels, but I, for one, will NOT stand by idly and accept that the country in which I was born and of which I was brought up to be proud has been turned into a socially-engineered machine for the benefit of a few dozen hubristic, deluded oligarchs for their own nefarious ends.

Serious situations demand serious measures. That is all.

Delusion

Probably posted this before. Can't be bothered to look.

Anyway, I'm going to do it again.

DELUSION

The three main criteria used to diagnose delusion, a serious mental illness, as defined by the psychiatrist Karl Jaspers in the '20s and commonly held to be the best indicators even to this day:

• Certainty (held with absolute conviction)
• Incorrigibility (not changeable by compelling counterargument or proof to the contrary)
• Impossibility or falsity of content (implausible, bizarre or patently untrue)

If someone is exhibiting any of these, it does not necessarily mean that he is delusional. If, however, he exhibits all of them, then it is pretty certain that he is fully delusional and thus is a danger to himself and others. 

If the patient is also the Prime Minister (and this only happens in a very small proportion of cases), then I think it is fair to say that there is absolutely no precedent to have to conform or comply with anything that he, or his government, has decreed whilst suffering from such mental illness, because mental instability is not commensurate with rational thought or action and is with some certainty detrimental to the ability to make serious decisions. I have done some considerable research on this subject and conclude that there are no extenuating circumstances, such as an overdose of bananas, which could have brought this condition on artificially.

Is there a lawyer, or a doctor, in the house? I might need a libel defence, and an expert witness. I certainly hope so. I believe, though, that I can prove, conclusively, that what I am implying is the truth.

I see indications in the Twitter posts, and other comments that I read in the papers from most Labour supporters, that some delusional behaviour is present, so there may be some correlation between such behaviour and the tendency to vote for a fellow sufferer as well, but I am making no real claims about this at this point. I may do later once I have researched the less severe form of delusion more fully.

Job

I haven't had a proper job since sometime in the eighties. Can't remember when exactly, but I think the Falklands War was on at the time, and Terry Wogan was singing the Floral Dance on the jukebox in the pub where I used to drink and smoke. My mind wanders, so these two events might have been miles apart. I think Mark Knopfler with Dire Straits were doing Romeo and Juliet at the time too.

So, have a Google, and you'll know the three different times that my memory is recalling.

Anyway, it was the fat end of thirty years ago.

Since then, fortune has variously smiled on me and now and again pissed in my kettle. I am lucky in that, although I managed to fail two out of three A levels with flying colours (the useful two, sadly, but I did very well in music, which is not what I do for a living), I have always had an eye for an opportunity. I have never had a plan. Never had an interview. Never actually gone for a job, they tend to find me. So, lucky.

I have managed to invent a few things, been bought and sold, been paid many hundreds of thousands of pounds and been owed about the same, debt gone bad, whoops. So I am mostly skint, though mostly have a few bob in the back pocket. I have no long term prospects, rather like the Labour Party, although while I can still breathe I will hopefully find someone who wants what I have to offer. Unlike the Labour Party, who are shafted up the wrong 'un with a splintered axehandle, regardless of what the Sun says.

I am tremendously loyal, in that I have never, ever left a job, or a client. That's my CV.

But in all the things I've done, I have produced what someone wanted, either in order to sell it to someone, to save money in producing it or to produce more of it.

That's what a job is. Where someone wants something you have in the way of time, energy, skill, and will make something of it to benefit himself. It might be money, and at the end of the chain it has to be money. Nothing comes of nothing.

I have many friends and most of them, sadly, work for the state in one way or other. That means that they have gold-plated pensions and pretty secure employment prospects as long as New Labour stay in.

But, apart from the teachers, they don't actually do anything. They achieve nothing. They make nothing. The could go on permanent holiday and nobody would notice.

And then for every few of them, there's a hierarchy of others, who manage them. And then there is H fucking R, which used to be called personnel, and still should be, and God knows they get a bloody fortune. And then on top of that there are junior ministers and then ministers.

And that isn't what a job is. It is just what unemployment isn't.

End of.

Am I wrong?

Farmyard

I'm not a homophobe. In fact, I'm not scared of anything.

I'm a white, male, heterosexual. I like it. But I can understand that some people don't think like I do. They way they think is pretty much alien to me. For instance, some third of voters indicate that they will vote for the most corrupt, incompetent government I have ever encountered, even though they promote equality in race, religion, sexual preference or anything else they can think of, whilst discriminating wildly and uncontrollably against someone who wants to work, drink, smoke and do anything remotely dangerous or fun.

If chaps want to go round enlarging the circle of their friends, it's fuckall to do with me.

If ladies prefer other ladies, and I'm not entirely sure what the lady equivalent of buggery is, and I care even less, then I only hope that the ladies in question are pig ugly because then they won't be wasted.

I understand, from what Ian Dale blogs, that it is 'not on' for one to naysay public snoggery involving a couple of hairy blokes. Or ladies, come to that. Unless it's just another way of having a pop at Mr Griffin, who may or may not be an obnoxious character (I don't know enough to judge him, but he's entitled to his opinions, as am I).

I'm not entirely sure than I particularly want to watch a hairy bloke and a pretty lady snogging in front of me either, when I'm eating my breakfast. Some things are just not meant to be public, but if one wants to see such japery, I believe that DVD films are available at your local shop, if you live near Walker's Court.

But where does this stop? Consenting adults of the same sex? People of differing race, or colour? Catholics and Muslims? Latex Protheses? Aliens? Farmyard Animals (as long as both parties clearly enjoy themselves)?

I see it as wanton change. Change anything. Doesn't matter what, why. Just change it. Whether it's right, wrong, broken, unbroken.

Tell me I'm wrong. And make a good case. I can't be the only one. Can I?

Doktas

Doctors should be banned in the mainstream media as well as places where people might listen to them, smokers are urging.

The Smokers' Collective wants England's imminent review of anti-bullshit laws to consider such measures to protect the gullible.

It says that visiting a doctor results in illness and drug-taking, figures which it says are 'cast-iron' and 'backed-up by statistics'.

But doctors say 'we are trying to make people better'.

A doctor, recently.

Mathematicians have taken a survey of 300,000 people who went to a doctor's surgery in the last week, and compared their general health with a control sample, again of 300,000 people who had not visited the doctor recently. There was a staggering correlation between the poor health of those who had visited the doctor, over 90% of them suffering from real health disorders (with the remainder suffering from a psychological condition known as hypochondria), whereas in the 300,000 non-visiting people there was a remarkable tendency toward being healthy, with over 95% of them reporting no symptoms of any illness at all.

"This is conclusive proof that doctors are hazardous to ones health", said a spokesman, "therefore we insist on the ban gong ahead before May 6th, after which some sort of sensibility might ensue, thus rogering our chances of yet more wanton bansturbation."

Cash

That nice Mr Darling has told Mr Bank that he must give basic accounts to poor people so they can pay their bills and not be excluded from society, because he is a nice man and he feels sorry for these poor people.

It's really nothing to do with the fact that these people are dealing in cash, and when you deal in cash that nice Mr Darling can't get his thieving mitts on your money because he doesn't know where every penny of it is going, every second of the day, oh dear no, what a suggestion.

Beat

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

Holby, the loon, has joined them. "Them" being the villains that he has been beating for so long.

I wish him all the very best and will donate to the campaign just as soon as he's managed to sort his knob out. And if I ever think of anyhing

I don't think Holby is corruptible. I know I'm as corrupted as I can become. I trust him to do what he says he'll do, and I know why he's doing it. It isn't some stupid ambition he's had since he was a kid.

I can't be an MP. Several things disqualify me from becoming one. I don't want to be one, either. I would be rubbish at it, I haven't got the time, the energy or the inclination.

But there is something I can do. And I can do it better than most people.

So I'm going to do that.

Not saying. How annoying is that?

Darth

Not to be outdone by Mr Rain, I offer you Lord Vader, just after he finds that the his Arch-Nemesis, Mr Bliar, plays the Stratocaster:

Kids

I love kids. I especially love kids who are above the age at which they need their nappies changing. Kids teach adults a lot more than adults teach kids, even though neither knows this.

I have kids. The little ones are the best. They ask about everything, anything. And they expect answers.

They ask the daftest things, anything from "why is diet coke bad for you?" to "why is there a big mark in the ceiling" to "how does gravity work?"

And they expect answers. And they get them.

I tell them, for instance, that aspartame is a drug and it is well-known (to me, anyway) that if you pump it into kids they develop all of the symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD, and therefore will become a pain in the backside, and therefore if they drink diet coke then their dad is going to start losing it. And their dad weighs three times as much as them and can lose his temper if pushed, so it will probably be best to drink full-fat coke instead and just make sure they clean their teeth before bedtime.

I tell them, for instance, that if they will insist on having a shower with the door open or play battleships with each other in the bath, the water which is meant to be in the respective receptacle will find its way through the floor and eventually soak through the plaster, and then Dad will have to get out the paintbrush and make it good, which means no football in the street today.

I tell them, for instance, that gravity is probably a wave-particle duality and as such is similar to light, although scientists don't fully understand how gravity works, and that if they pay attention at school and become scientists and find the answer then neither they, nor their dad, will ever have to work again yay! This may or may not be true, as I tend to make things up now and again when I'm struggling.

However, what I don't tell them, for instance, is that aspartame has been passed by the FSA (the food one, not the financial one) and, as such, is perfectly safe even though it has been banned in some other naughty countries, and because it is a substitute for sugar it will not make them fat.

I don't tell them, for instance, that they should shut up and do their homework.

I don't tell them, for instance, that gravity has always been there so it doesn't matter, because, in real terms, allowing for changes over the last few years, it is better than it was under the Conservative government.

And they respect me. They also know that I am a seriously dodgy character, and I have explained to them why I am as bent out of shape as I am. And they understand that. But, at the end of the day, they know the reasons for things.

And if I lost my job tomorrow, which is on the cards, they would understand that the chances of getting a new game for the whatever gizmo it is that they play games on would be pretty remote.

However, they think I'm cool, whatever that is. And so do their mates. Which is nice.

What I couldn't cope with is knowing that the kids were going to school and being told by their mates that their mates' dad thinks that their dad was a completely useless, lying, double-dealing, hubristic tosspot who didn't give a stuff about anyone but himself, and sold the country down the river.

Not like certain other people's kids probably do.

Speed

A plea to the blogsphere:

I read the daily bloglist on an iPhone (sometimes) and a laptop (sometimes).

On the iPhone, I am often at the mercy of a crap wireless or crap Tesco Mobile.

On the laptop,  I am blessed with a Big Fat Dedicated internet connection.

On both, some blogs take forever to load. Forever, then a day. On the iPhone it is because of bandwidth. On the laptop it is because of processor throttling.

May I be so bold as to suggest to bloggers that they try to load their blogs on substandard shite and see what happens?

I will say that Holby's new one at oldholborn.net is lightning, apart from the picture at the top. And mine is pretty quick too. And Corrugated-Soundbite, and ColdSteelRain.

But there are some which are painful, so painful that even when they appear to have loaded you can't then scroll them for ages until they've finished loading, and all you can see is the huge banner at the top until then.

If you want me to have a look at your particular blog and let you know how it performs, let me know in the comments, but please don't moan at me when I tell you it's pants.

Suffice to say three of my most read blogs suffer from this. It's mainly posting daft video links which slug them. And I hate videos anyway, I prefer to read, because I can. I can't have the sound on at work and at "home" I have not internet to speak of. Oh, and the iPhone won't play "Flash". Yet.

Thanks for listening.

Egocentric

I am. Are you? I don't care whether you are or not, actually. Egocentric, that is.

We reside, as I was recently reminded by Cold Steel Rain, in an insignificant part of the universe known as the Milky Way galaxy. You will not, unless you are an accomplished mathematician and cosmologist, ever be able to comprehend how insignificant that galaxy is. It is the equivalent of the penny down the back of your sofa compared to the money dished out to all of the world's banks last year. That small. One of the arms of our galaxy (that'll be the swirly bits) known as Orion's arm, or the Western Spiral Arm, contains loads of stars and stuff, an insignificant one of which is a gurt ball of gas which we call the sun. To a small part of the rest of our corner of the galaxy, it's a twinkle, on a very dark, clear night. Round this sun are planets, such as Mercury, Venus and so on. The third from the sun, after Mercury and Venus, is the one on which we live, called Earth.

Yeah, right, Stephen Hawkin, what? What's Marvo waffling on about now, eh?

Egocentric.

Earth is a tiny dot. Tiny. But we think of it as big and important. I reside in a tiny island in the middle of a cold and mostly angry sea, called the North Sea. A few years ago, it was inhabited by a handful of wretched people who lit fires to keep warm, for the island is pretty cold most of the time. When they weren't lighting fires they were trying to kill stuff to eat, or picking berries.I suppose they must have fitted in a bit of shagging as well, otherwise everyone would have gone by now.

After a while, some of the bigger/stronger/more aggressive types decided to become kings. This must have been so, unless Boadicea rogered her way into the job. I don't know. History says something about it but it is at best unreliable. The Romans came and civilised the whole shebang, but then they buggered off again and the indigenous Brits reverted to type.

The Brits got invaded by the Vikings, who looted, raped and pillaged and made some of us blond/blonde. Eventually, the Brits got round to invading other people, like most of Europe, and our Kings and Queens ended up shagging foreigners, mainly interbred foreigners, and then started interbreeding themselves. As recently as Victorian times, our King and Queen were first cousins.

Great.

Round about the middle of the 1600's, before they'd even invented the toilet, Parliament was formed. It hasn't changed much.

Now, I, sitting here on this giraffe in the middle of the place they call England, am thinking as the centre of the Universe. So are you. You are not looking in from outside. You don't think of the Queen, or Parliament, as the middle with you on the outside. Or even England as a little bit of Europe, mixed with a bit of America. Do you?

If you do, send me a hat and I'll eat it.

I think this next bit might be where I'm awfully wrong. I still think of me at the middle. The computer in front of me is still in front of me. I am not behind it. Above me is a ceiling. I don't think of myself as under it. Out of the window there are big trucks. Far away is a motorway, and down that motorway is London. In London the is a big building and in that big building there are people making decisions, and those decisions are about me. Egocentric me.

I am one person. I know what I want to achieve, because I have kids, and I know what is best for them. When they get much older, they will know, but now, I know.

I shall now get to the point. At last. But bear in mind I'm talking about me. Me me me me me.

People with very good intentions are trying to get something done about the status quo. This is right. The status quo is so far wrong that there is no logical path to right from it, short of a major upheaval. And some people seem to have got a pretty good idea into their heads, viz. to go on strike. I'm not talking Unite, I'm talking Fausty here. A brilliant idea.

I will join in. I will join in because it is all bollocks as it is. People in this Parliament (you know, the sham that started 400 years ago, before they invented the toilet), who know NOTHING about me, my aspirations, who in fact NOTHING apart from their own fantasies, are making decisions on my behalf. NON.

The question I ask, in my usual rambling way is this:

When "we" get what "we" want, presumably a big shake-up, what do "we" do next?

Nobody has asked me what I want.

Have they asked you?

Will

Leg Iron has a rather good post today (or was it last night?) in which he puts forward the case against socialism. I agree with him. Normally when I start going off on one about such things people manage to compare me to A. Hitler, so I don't do it too much any more.

I'm not sure I'd say socialism in itself won't work - I think a degree of it is fine, but once you get to the thick end, which is what we're treated to by Blairowndelson, it is insidious and will not work in a million years. However, what it managed to do was to bestow unimaginable prospects on a great many people and thus generate the Blairowndelson Party lots and lots of votes. And lots of votes they had, twice. Sadly, this isn't sustainable, as anyone with an IQ on the scale of Leg Iron's (I'm not going to say what mine is, because I'm too embarrassed) would have guessed before the start of the fiasco.

Anyway, that's all done, and plain to see. And Leg Iron's done this one miles better than I would have done.

But I leaked in a post on Obo's blog that today, I'd be blogging about technology. Wish I hadn't done, I don't know what to write now.

Ah, yes. I often wonder, being an old fart, when the world I use to know started to become the world I knew no more. I remember, very clearly, the times from when I must have been around six or seven when I walked to the shop next to an open borstal to get my dad half an ounce of Old Holborn and a packet of green papers, to the times when I used to play on building sites with my brother (who is still a cunt), and we used to build rafts out of pallets and sail them across huge gravel pits full of water and try to tip each other off his raft (my brother still can't swim), to the times when me and my mate blew up the air raid shelters at school, to that glorious day when I found that I'd failed all my 'A' levels. Quality job.

In today's world, I would certainly not have done, or been able to do, any of those things. I couldn't fail an 'A' level now if I tried - trust me, I've seen the papers.

So I got a job, because my old man told me that that was one of the choices. The other was to fuck off.

And I got a job working with computers. There weren't many of them at that time, and the one on which I worked is now in the science museum. Really and truly, go and see it, it's worth it.

What follows is what happened as I remember it. And it's real. Forget anything else you've read, but bear in mind that I am English and for the most part worked in England, so the American perspective will be missing. What the government did while this was going on is in italics, so you can skip the most boring bits. It's worth reading if you like tits.

Shortly after I started, these computers became more and more prevalent. They became smaller and smaller. They became cheaper and cheaper.

When I started, and this wasn't when they were driven by steam, these machines were meant to be able to add up and take away faster and more accurately than people. This was a Good Thing, because the people were expensive, inaccurate and slow.

I must make the point here that the computers were not meant to take away the jobs of the people involved. Those people at the time were drones. Jobs for them were still there, but were more interesting, and generally those people were happier. Someone will argue with this, hopefully, but that someone will be too young to remember and will be spouting a socialist mantra.

The government had some of these computers. Not many, because there just weren't many. They used them for the right reasons, to do things faster and more accurately. And more cheaply. But they were crap at £:s/d, so we went decimal.


This continued for a short while, then a company called IBM started making minicomputers. In today's terms, these were huge, but compared to their forerunners they were tiny. They had integrated circuits (chips) in them, instead of transistors and ferrite cores. And more people could afford them, and so more companies used them.

The government had some of these computers. Not that many, because there still weren't that many. They used them for the right reasons, to do things faster and more accurately. And more cheaply.


Soon, a chap called Clive Sinclair, who was actually quite a bright guy but one who did some daft things like inventing the black watch and the C5, made a thing called a ZX80. It was pretty useless. I bought one or, rather, swapped one for my drawing board. Biggest mistake I made since I sold my bassoon to buy a Puch Maxi moped. The ZX80 had a horrible BASIC interpreter and you could connect it to a tape deck and download programs on to it. They took forever and usually didn't work either. Cunning people in garages wrote games for these machines, such as Space Invaders. They were shit and you were better off going and playing it on a pub table machine. Or just having a beer instead.

The government, to my knowledge, had none of these computers. That is mainly because they were shit.


As the years went on, companies produced smaller and smaller and cheaper and cheaper computers. ICL (before it was Fujitsu) brought in one called the DRS, the Distributed Resource System. Cock, but a nice colour. Lots of companies bought these, because they were cheap, and there was some software available to run on them which was a bonus. Instead of just sitting them in a corner, you could actually do useful work. At this point, companies began to realise that you could buy a computer and use it to do the jobs of people. There was sadly nothing left for the people to do, so they were made redundant or just not replaced.

The government, and local government too, bought shedloads of these computers. This was mainly because ICL was a British company and the councils were therefore instructed to do so. The rot set in about here, I think. Council tax was all done on these things, and letters went through people's doors with a demand for £0.00.


Not long after that, and in parallel, IBM, or Big Blue, invented (or rather developed) the PC. The PC was, and still is, a Personal Computer. It had a screen and a keyboard, and a big metal box with a processor in it. I seem to remember that most, if not all of them were driven by processors made by Motorola. That might be complete cock, but I don't believe so. On the home side, the BBC brought out a Model B. Too little, too late, but it had a wicked game of Elite.

The government, local government, everybody with a taxi firm and most window cleaners bought one of these. They took a week to load and crashed every five minutes, so they saw that it was good.


ICL, not to be outdone, copied it. Apple, on the other hand, were a bit slippery and improved it. While IBM and ICL were struggling with an operating system called DOS, Apple were making a thing called Macintosh. It had a mouse. Apple were a bit short-staffed, so they enlisted the service of a chap called Bill Gates who, in his garage, undertook a bit of work for them (this is where I get sued). While he was doing this work, he ripped off the clever bits, the bits that made these McPC's do things which looked "cool", as in a bit graphical, and worked with the mousey thing. He then created an operating system called Windows. It was shit. It is still shit, but is now a whole new crock of shit.

The government abandoned the old PCs and replaced them with this new crock. And Apples. And because the government isn't allowed to get rid of people in huge numbers, they just invented job titles and gave them to the people who used to do the jobs that were now redundant. So the people carried on, and kept calm, and spent a lot of the time in the pub.


Because these PCs were now so prevalent, a number of companies sprung up to develop more and more complex chips to drive the things. Motorola were pretty much shafted by Intel and the lesser-known competitors such as AMI, so they made a thing called a mobile phone instead.

The government saw the potential for the mobile phone so sold licences to the highest bidders to provide the services. Meanwhile they continued buying PCs and giving people stupid job titles.


Finally came the internet. With the internet it was no longer necessary for people to buy porn, they could just download it. Here is a gratuitous example of porn, to try to make the blog more attractive:

I wonder if the readership will top 100 today?

Now the computer was so well-established, industry and commerce were going for it in a big way. They employed IT specialists by the zillion. They saw opportunities in finance, insurance, manufacturing, even the arts, to utilise this stuff.

Because of the humble PC with its low price tag and constantly-improving performance and reliability (ROFL), new markets emerged. Many were a Good Thing. Many more were bad.

And a whole new sector was born. Service. IT service. A heap of suits who know little more, and often less, than the person to whom they were providing the service.

Most people who have a PC on their desks use it hideously inefficiently.

The government have zillions of computers. I would suggest that every single desk in government has a PC on it, if not more than one. I would suggest that for every half-dozen or so of these, there is someone employed in their support operation. I would suggest that the people who use these things would be better off looking out of the window, if they don't already, and use their brains instead of typing away.

And that, so far as I can see, is where it has collapsed into a steaming pile of irredeemable cack.

I admit that I am one of these IT people. More accurately, I am an engineer. A software engineer. A heap of thes PCs, admittedly quite big ones, run this huge plant by which I am surrounded. It is a 3 Megawatt production plant, which makes stuff, very efficiently. Sometimes I feel a bit like Homer Simpson, a twat surrounded by a heap of very clever stuff, press the wrong button and I could seriously make a hell of a mess. So I try not to.

The government have huge IT projects. You will have heard of many of them, such as the NHS database. You will not have heard of many of them, because they are secret. I have worked on some of them and I can't say what they are because of the OSA, and the men in black suits. Suffice to say all bar one of them have been complete shit, and the exception was pretty shit, and very expensive shit at that. The government waste massive amounts of money developing these systems, and they usually don't work properly, if at all. This is partly the fault of the government in that it will only deal with a very few suppliers, who are large and inefficient and not particularly good either, and in that the government can never agree exactly what the system is meant to do.


Jack Straw famously said quite recently (and I'm not going to bother looking up the exact words) that IT people should be forced to speak in plain English so that people can understand them. That makes him a cunt, because people in IT communicate the way they do because otherwise it would take all day to convey what they are trying to say. I suspect that Jack Straw, and the rest of them, should try to find a way forward out of the current financial and economic and hapless health-and-safety-nanny-state mess into which they've got us, rather than looking for a use for all this technology that they probably shouldn't have wasted your money on in the first place.

[lady blogreaders - if you'd rather I didn't put the pictures in let me know. I'm trying to get my readership up!]

Waste

A subject a bit close to me today, as our local Council have just voted against the Nuclear Waste dump next to my kid's school on the grounds that the dumping company may have understated the probability of this stuff causing people to grow two heads and become sterile.

I have a solution.

Remember, remember the 5th of November? The unsuccessful attempt by a Mr. G. Fawkes to conceal a few barrels of dynamite beneath the House?

I wonder if those tunnels and cellars are still there? Because if they are, then I've thought of a place to dump it.

NIMBY? Moi?

Free

The Freeman Movement - Marvo’s thoughts.

If you're of a nervous disposition, easily let down or depressed, then please go somewhere else. This is not what you want to hear.

I am writing this because Holby brought my attention to it. I then brought people's attention, in the comments, to the fact that it was a conman in the video. To Holby's credit, he has not removed, nor altered, the post. I would have deleted it and hoped nobody had read it. Holby is a braver man than I, I suspect.

What surprised me was that, even though this cunt (not Holby) had been exposed, people were STILL posting comments on the blog saying what a hero he was. For. Fuck's. Sake.

I am immune. Completely and utterly immune.

I’ve been there. I am familiar with (and skilled in) the techniques used by organised religion, from the C of E to the Catholics to the Jews to the Jedi. I know fuckall, and wish to know fuckall, about the Muslims, Hindus and Martians, because you can’t know everything.

No. I can’t be brainwashed. I am immune.

There’s background for you.

This is going to be long. Long, boring, repetitive.

Brainwashing is. Long, boring, repetitive.

If you can’t take it, leave now.

In the meantime, and in keeping with trying to make the blog more interesting (I'm fighting a losing battle here), I am inserting a gratuitous picture of a lady, in the same way as perhaps The Sun would. I haven't got any idea who she is, but she obviously knows me.

Still here?

Shit. I’d better explain. Some of us are seeking a better way. We know it’s out there.

There isn’t a blue pill or a red pill. We are not seeking something that the filmmakers have exaggerated out of all proportion; we are not clones from Star Wars or the Matrix (though they are both very good films).

Me? I remember better days. Some of you don’t remember, you just know that the status quo is wrong. It doesn’t fit. It isn’t right.

You’ve studied the watered-down modern-day what-you’re-taught version of what you think history is?

I don’t know who reads this blog. I know a very few do, and I know that some are from as far afield as the US.

I’ve looked at the Freedom movement. With the capital “F”. Freeman on the Land. I’ve looked at the history. Where it came from. The Magna Carta (with which I’m familiar, as any skoolboy kno). I have read EVERYTHING and watched EVERYTHING that is available on the internut. EVERYTHING. I have seen all of those "letters" and "court rooms". I know the difference between ILLEGAL and UNLAWFUL. I know the difference between COMMON LAW and STATUTES.

And (please leave now if you’re looking for an answer) I have found this truth.

FMOTL is bollocks. Bollocks, you hear? Utter, unmitigated bollocks.

It’s a shame. I like the idea. I embrace the idea. But the State is a machine, which is self-propagating, which runs itself on our lifeblood, in the form of money and effort, like the Machines in the Matrix or the Empire in Star Wars. With OUR money and effort. But it is NOT a corpofuckingration. It does not italicise its CON. It is NOT registered at Companies House. Get real. Have a nice cup of Shut The Fuck Up about italics, registration numbers, Dun and Bradstreet and what-have-you. The original evidence for UKplc was horsecrap, a couple of foreign Johnnies in a flat in the shit end of London trading secondhand rags. FACT. And when exposed, what did the disciples do? Deny it. Bollocks. Go and have a look at some of the "corporations". Look up their postcodes, and go to Google Maps. See the glorious farmhouses in Yorkshire. Run for money? You bet your sweet bippy it's run for money. Tax is their power. But it's been like that since Julius Caesar and before. And it wasn't The Roman Empire plc.

I have read, in detail, a shitload of references to the FMOTL movement. In law, it is all bollocks. Yes, there is common law. Yes, there is naval law (and it's old). There is nobody, but nobody, who promotes this concept in any way, shape or form, that I have more respect for than I have for this fish pie that I’m about to pull out of the oven (watches clock).

I am not daft, nor am I stupid. Nor am I gullible. I don’t believe anything I see, read or hear - ESPECIALLY on the internut - unless I can validate it with fact. Nor do my kids – I’ve brought them up that way, right or wrong. It’s important.

I first read about the FMOTL movement on t’internet. Most people will have done, unless they are mates with someone familiar with it. And, unsurprisingly, the information I read featured a John:Harris. He has a way about him. He's a confident speaker. I like the cut of his jib. But he’s actually a chippie, A carpenter. Wonderful. Jesus Christ was one; by all accounts a pretty good one. I don’t know, I wasn’t there. But He had the advantage that it was 2000 years ago, most people couldn't read or write, and they were oppressed by the Romans, who had the advantage of a civilisation.

I am not a chippie. I am crap at woodwork. However, I can spell, on a good day. And I can bullshit, on a good day. I don’t have to resort to making stuff up, in a Dan Brown stylee, to try to make my point.

There are a lot of chaps involved in the FMOTL movement. A lot of organisations too, run by said chaps. I wonder why? If I earned, say £10 per hour, would I prefer to earn, say £100 and hour by promoting a system, making myself an authority on it, and writing a book? Probably. But then I might get away with it, because I can write.

Fuck it. It’s a waste of time on a huge scale. There is not a competent lawyer (if there is such as thing) anywhere near this.

I work in absolutes. If what I do doesn’t work, people die. They die messily. So I get it right. Until it’s right, it goes nowhere. That’s not superiority, it’s reality. Nobody has died, or even scratched their finger, on my watch.

There is NO big conspiracy theory. NOTHING is hidden. The Powers-That-Be, the oligarchy that run this feeble excuse for the country in which I was born, of which I was once justly proud, are not hiding anything. And if they were, they'd do it properly. Try researching BERR, for instance. Gone, and never called me Mother. All they have done is to sell the dream, the dream wherein everyone (apart from the indigenous white heterosexual) is  equal. The dream wherein everyone, but everyone, is entitled to a fair future (unless they work and pay tax).

Half of the working population pay for the other half, except possibly in the case of the banking sector, where all of the population pay for that sector many times over and for many years to come. And it isn't a New World Order. It's just a fucking pisstake. That's all. Yes, it's run by Big Corporations and Banks. Of course it is. And it's driven by MONEY and POWER and FAME. Of course it is. And if you aspire to any of those things, then you need another dose of reality. We're here for no time at all, then we're gone. And forgotten. Forever.

Proof? Right. You're an arse who hasn't had a decent education, spent too much time with wine, women and song, never bothered to better yourself by studying or working hard? The bloke next door is CEO of a large Corporation and has a fuckoff swimming pool in his back garden, a gas-guzzling 4x4 limo and a trophy blonde wife half his age. You can either rob him, or beat him. What do you do? Become a union man. There. Easy.

It IS shit. There is no doubt that it is a steaming, festering pile of shit.

It CAN be changed. There is no doubt that it can be changed.

And all I am asking is that you, YOU, search your soul. The FMOTL movement is an unadulterated pile of crap, with no basis in fact, law, reality or anything else with which I am familiar. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull is dead.

To quote someone else, because their words are better than mine:

"He's NOT the Messiah. He's just a very naughty boy."

Now, it’s up to you. At least argue. If you’ve read this far, at least argue.

What I'd really like are some links, so I can explain them rationally. Start with this one, posted on Holby's blog by "Anon", and tell me, truly, whether you're going to accept it. If so, spend a few minutes ringing those numbers. Ask Lisa (if you can find her) whether she really sent a letter stating "... you're attendance ...".

Oh, come on.

Then when you've had a dose of reality, go and read Fausty. And weep.

[That's going to upset a few people, Marv. Sure you can handle it?]

The 15p joke

I am really crap at jokes. This one is old, so I'm not off to a good start. It used to be called the Penny-Farthing joke, when I was a mere Nephew.

I suppose you need to exaggerate to get the effect, but I will try it as it is.

Topical, given the tragic loss of life of a couple of lads on a dodgy drug.

Anyway (and I will probably delete this when I find it didn't work) ...

There's these three chaps in a pub. Not English, Irish and Scots, just three chaps.

They get to chatting, and it turns out that they're all drug rehabilitation officers. Coincidentally.

---

First chap says "I use the 15p method. Find it works a treat. I say to them 'this is the size of your brain BEFORE you use drugs







 Afterwards, it's this size."

---

Second chap says "I use a similar method. Find it works a treat. I say to them 'this is the size of your wallet BEFORE you use drugs







 Afterwards, it's this size."

---

Third chap says "I use the 15p method too. I say to them 'if you use drugs, you will get caught. You will go to court. The judge will find you guilty. You will go to prison. When you go to prison, your arsehole will be this size ......

Mephedrone

Couple of poor lads have topped themselves using a dodgy drug known as Methedrone.

Peer pressure, I expect. Or just fed up with the constant battering from the establishment. Or possibly the sudden realisation that a promising future might have gone down the toilet because, oh dear, someone has spunked all the money on banking, insurance, horseshit and advertising. I could go on, but I'd be beating a drum in a desert, I think.

Look. When I was a lad of that age, it was pretty unusual to find a chap who didn't smoke, drink, puff hash, even dabble in a bit of horse, coke or acid. For fuck's sake.

So let the bansturbators out of their little boxes, this might even get a couple of votes.

I suggest a blanket ban on any sort of adhesive, including evo-stik, araldite, UHU, cyanoacrylates as well as most household products, fuels, incendiary devices, fertilisers and bananas.

Bananas? Look it up.

I have another solution. Repeal the last twelve years-worth of stupid, unenforceable, pointless sabre-rattling laws. Put the last twelve years of hell-making behind us. Start again. Give the lads and lasses something to do.

That would work.

And, in addition, line up the perps in front of a firing squad and lets have the biggest, best fuckoff party we can have.

That last bit was just for my own personal pleasure, you understand.

Science

One of the Miliclowns, the Ed one, said on the Beeb that "The science tells us that it is more than 90% likely that there will be more extreme weather events if we don't act".


The science. Ed, do fuck off.

Tell me your qualifications and experience for knowing anything more than jack shit about the science. The science told me that it was going to rain here yesterday. There was more than 80% chance of rain. And was there rain? Was there fuck. Same science. And, for nothing, I cleared up outside. Now I've got to go and get it all back out again before I can start work.

Michael Fish was qualified, in a small way, to interpret the science. He said it would be fine and dandy just before a load of roofs and fences made their way into next door's garden.

I am qualified, in a very small way indeed, having had to do enough meteorology to get a pilot's licence (and believe me, it isn't much). And nearly all of what I read about this is bull, and the rest is shit.

And that money, that money you spent on those dodgy adverts. It isn't yours. And now the adverts have been pulled, give it back.

Information->Mangle->Spend.

Wankers. That's all I can say.

Jury

Seems that the Old Bastard Holby, masked crusader extraordinaire is up to something. Again.

I like the cut of the Jury Team's jib. They have ideas, lots of them, all good so far as I can see. And I like the way they're asking for people to stand as MPs, because that's the way in. Once in, regroup, and the system can be turned upside-down.

I have been to their site and browsed for MPs. There are few. Lamentably few. There will be an election, very soon, possibly in only a month or so. And they haven't got a handful of representatives yet. They obviously have some cash, looking at the size of their adverts in the MSM, and the quality of their website. Yes, they have to start somewhere. A couple of years ago, maybe.

And here am I, not prepared to stand as an MP. I am quite happy with my PPC, a Ms Louise Bagshawe, writer of books, a very intelligent lady and a defector from Lab to Con.

I would be quite a good MP, I think. Though I'd have to take a pay cut, and I wouldn't be able to stand up in Parliament and talk the sort of bollocks that they do, like "The Honourable Whatever" when I really meant "Twat". And if they did a bit of digging they'd find enough to fill a couple of copies of the News of the World. All bad, I'm afraid.

So no, I won't be standing. I'd have more chance of becoming the Pope than becoming an MP.

And I have been negative over there at OH's place. I don't know why. Perhaps I just feel negative today, the Powers-That-Be who surely MUST know they've nowhere to go now are strutting around STILL talking utter, utter bollocks.

Someone famous once said that a person's desire to be a politician should disqualify them from being one. Or something. I can't remember who, it might have been me. I believe that. I believe that because the ones we have ruining the country at the moment are professional politicians, and once elected they impose their ideas on us. Doesn't matter if something is broken, they try to fix it. I see it daily at the HugeCo for whom I do some work. It is sickening. Money, which isn't really theirs, yet money they have control of, being frittered on all sorts of stupid, meaningless projects because they can. They just can.

I'm sure these babbling idiots mean well. I hope so, because if not, I would be justified in borrowing a GPMG and running amok for ten minutes or so until I was captured by the Feds.

I don't think Jury Team is going anywhere. I think that the proletariat are 90+ percent vegetable and they'll vote as they always vote.

But I say this to Old Holborn:

• I don't know who the fuck you are, except that you're a masked mischief-maker. I've bunged you a wad of readies over the internet, no receipt, no nothing, and I'm happy with that. I don't know why you'd want to become an MP. I don't care. But I trust you to do the right thing.
  
• And I'll see you on the 30th, with beer vouchers. 

Drop

... in the Ocean.

I see there are proposals to cut ministers by a third, according to the Beeb. I suggest the top third, from just below the shoulders.

Ah. Reading further, the suggestion is to cut the number of ministers. To cut costs. And make parliament more independent.

Bollocks. Assuming that the third are of the really highly-paid, such as Mandy who gets the thick end of £200,000 we'd save about £8m. Fuck all.

But hold on. In 2007, the DTI became BERR. The Bureau for Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. I had a particular gripe with BERR (the reason I am now irreparably bent out of shape), which encompassed not only the DTI but all sorts of other junk such as the court "service", Companies Arse, etc, and were pretty badly named as they did nothing for Enterprise (apart from try to kill it off) and the only Regulatory Reform they did was to make sure that the government got more than they got before. Some departments were amalgamated, and costs of ministers would have been duly cut, had they not been redeployed to other non-jobs.

BERR had a budget of about £3bn.

This £8m, compared to that £3bn, is about 0.25%, one quarter of one percent. Which isn't really very much. But, as TESCO says, every little helps.

But wait! BERR is no more. Mandy, last year, reformed it. So the Department for Enterprise and Regulatory Reform has reformed. It is now BIS, the Business Innovation and Skills Department. And now it has a budget of £22bn. And our £8m is only .03% of that, aka one tenth of one third of one percent.

So it's fuck all.

What is REALLY scary, to me anyway, is that BIS, at £22bn, or to give it its full title, £22,000,000,000 or one English pound per day per man, woman and child, is only the SIXTH largest spending department in Whitehall.

I would dearly love to know what the others do. And indeed, what they, or any of them, do.

Important

http://ukwebspider.blogspot.com/

I like UKWebSpider. Survival is what he's doing at the moment. Reminds one of the sort of film that would feature Sylvester Stallone, Will Smith or the like, playing a desperate man trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world.

I don't know whether Spidey is right or not. I don't know if we are imminently pre-apocalyptic. If we are, go and download his torrent. Prepare to meet thy doom.

I am in a pretty unusual situation. I have survived in some pretty strange places, for one reason or another about which I choose not to expand at the moment. Without food, and without water. I have lived without heat or fuel in some drastically low temperatures, for quite long periods. I'm not saying that I could live like the wild man of Borneo for a year living on crushed bird droppings and sand, and drinking the juice from sloes. But I know more than most about how to, at least.

So, maybe we should be listening to Spidey. We should have tins, and jars, and candles, and coal, and wood. I have. And our toys should be able to run off batteries and generators. Mine do. It won't do any harm.

But here's a thing, and this definitely makes me think.

The government machine put out a "survival guide" not so long ago. It told of what we should do when the tourists attack. Or was it terrorists? We should have tins, and jars, and a battery-operated radio set. And we should stay in, and tune in. And all radio channels will tell us what to do.

If we suffer a half-decent attack from some hairy-arsed foreign nutcase armed with a bundle of enriched uranium and a detonator, I can tell you what we should do. We should place out heads carefully between our legs and kiss our arses goodbye.

But what will they do? Aha. I shall tell. They have a bunker. All "authorities" have them. They are hidden, because if they weren't hidden, they would be taken over by bigger, stronger people than the authorities. They are supposed to be radiation-proof, which means that they have big fat thick walls made of concrete and lined with lead, and/or they are deep under the ground. And they will be full of tins and jars. And there will be a communication line to upstairs so the authorities will be able to tell the radio stations what to transmit, for the protection of the proles, even though there is actually a hole the size of a small planet underneath what used to be Broadcasting House.

But the authorities are important. They know all. They are the chosen ones. They will know what to do, they will keep calm. They will carry on. They will eat all of the tinned food, and drink all of the water. They will consume all of the oxygen. The generator will run out of fuel, and they will emerge into the bright sunshine to the sound of trumpets, where the radiation will remove the skin from their backs and THEY WILL DIE.

So that's a waste of time then.

However, maybe it won't be the hairy-arsed nutter. Maybe it will be the minor nutter. Or the tourists. Maybe it won't be nuclear.

Then the authorities will bunker down, and eventually it will al be over, and the authorities can make a new society. It will be really good, this one, because it will feature only the authorities, and they are the chosen ones, and they are superior, and the New World Order will be super-intelligent, literate, numerate, loving control and ...

Hold on. Where is the money going to come from? They only exist because they are funded by people who do stuff. People who make stuff. People who grow stuff.

I would love to be a fly-on-the-wall. I would dearly love to watch them running round telling each other what to do, wondering where all the pizza went, wondering why the light doesn't work, and talking complete and utter bollocks.

By What Right?

Direct Dot Gov Dot UK has a load of stuff about Citizens and Rights.

A Citizen is, apparently, someone owing allegiance to and entitled to the protection of a state. You can get this debt simply by being born. Alternatively, you can accumulate one of these debts by signing up for it, in the form of naturalisation.

I was born, like most people. I was born in England. Not Scotland, Wales the EU, but England. It was part of Great Britain then, and still is, so I guess I am a citizen of Great Britain.

OK. I assume the mantle of Great Britain citizenship, although I prefer to be English (my family have been English for nearly 1000 years).

Now, according to the Direct.Wotsit.Gov.Thing where your rights come from - they come from the British Constitution. The British Constitution is a set of rules of government. It is not formally written down. In fact, it is not written down anywhere. It is actually just a wild guess, at best, and at worst the imposition of a set of arbitrary laws made up by a government that I didn't elect (and nor did two-thirds of my compatriots), along with another heap made by the European Union (which nobody in the UK elected even though they may have been conned into voting for the Common Market).

Assuming (and please don't) that I accept any of this so far, I then have the right to free speech. As long as I don't say something that the government doesn't like.

And in return for this, I am supposed to offer loyalty. Loyalty is something you earn. But loyalty is the Numero Uno that I am asked for.

So, OK. Loyalty. Fair do's. Free Speech for Loyalty. Fair enough.

And what, I ask, is the number two priority, to their tiny minds? Ah. Not plotting against the state. As if.

And then, among my other responsibilities, I see voting, jury service, giving evidence in court. I don't. I haven't. I won't.

But I see a pattern. This outfit must be run by lawyers, for lawyers.

I do what I'm told, then I'm allowed to request information (as long as it doesn't cost much, and I know exactly who to ask, and it isn't sensitive), I'm allowed to protest (as long as it's ineffective), I'm allowed to complain about discrimation (as long as I'm not indegenous, white, heterosexual and able-bodied), and I'm allowed to get married (as long as it isn't to a farmyard animal).

But what I want is change. Not this #changewesee troll, but change. The system we labour under is ancient. It was created when most people couldn't read or write. And they tended to die before 30. And they had wooden teeth. Today we are in the twenty-first century. We can read. Write. Surf the net.

And I know it's bollocks. It's not the government. It's not the parties. It's not the rules. It's the whole shebang. And I don't want it.

So, as regards your deal, in the words of my Great-great (repeat twenty-something times) Grandfather:

NON.

Twelve years hard Labour. I could probably do murder and get less than that with good behaviour.

Adonis

Mr Andrew Baron Lord Half Bubble Adonis, noted Transport Minister of the current collection, has been saying for a while that, whatever happens, he will be the Vicar of Bray Transport Minister in the next episode of troughsnouting.

He can do this, because he is unelected. He is a Lord. Bit like Uddin, who is a Lordess.

The bronzed Adonis has said that Unite, the union bent on destroying our biggest and best airline, BA, by encouraging the hoi-poloi trolley-dollies and trolly-boyes to chuck in their futures and thereby bankrupt the airline and give the Union more power, are wonky. He actually said that the action was "totally unjustified", which it is. And "inappropriate", which he didn't say. I just did.

I agree with what he said. I suspect that Mr Gordolo Clown does, too. But he can't be seen to be agreeing, and he can't be seen to be disagreeing.

As a minister for transport, the Noble Lord is ideal. So far as I can see, he's done the square root of fuck all (as did the Vicar of Bray) since he's been in. Most people haven't even heard of him.

So here is my suspicion for the day, and I am making this up:

Lord A is not daft. He knows that if the Unite thing goes ahead everybody and his dog will be seriously pissed off. Especially those who have booked holidays in the sun and are about to fly BA. So he says something. This is good, because then History will show that he did. He can then say "I told you so."

Sadly for the present incompetent incumbent, Messrs Unite furnish the campaign with a Fat Wad (TM) without which they are going to struggle. Also, the Party Faithful, those ex-miners whose jobs were fucked long ago because of the Party, and who now exist, handsomely, on Party benefits paid for by the proletariat, would then vote for the Monster Raving Loony Sospan Bach Male Voice Choristers instead. So the Clown is in a quandary. He can either tell Lord Unelected that he doesn't agree, whereupon when it all goes tits-up and BA return to the dust from whence they came, it will be the ultimate squirty cream on the cup of disaster he's experienced ever since his rise to the seat of power. Or he can say he does agree, and hope the union comes to its senses, ROFL.

Lord A wins either way.

The only question the answer to which I am not sure of is "How Much Did Cam Pay Him"?


B.A. commented on the situation earlier today, saying "Ain't goin' on no goddam airplane, fool".

Labour

There is something seriously wrong.

A Tory, a Liberal, a Libertarian, whatever, will look at a particular policy, be it on education, transport, Europe or what-have-you, and comment on it depending on its merits.

A Labourite (is that the word?) will say "it is Labour and therefore it is good", regardless of what it actually is, how ridiculous it is, how desperate or damaging it is. It is like some sort of religion.

I know this sounds like shite, but really, have a look at ANY of the bloggers or tweeters. ANY of them.

Why?

My theory is that Labour is like Catholicism, in that you don't have to think for yourself. You just do what McBroon, B. Liar, Mandy or the Pope says.

My opinion. I'd be interested to hear yours.

Holborn

Well done, Old Holborn, Anna Raccoon, et al

Now I suggest sending that link to anyone and everyone you know. Now.

Copy and paste

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/7416601/Landlord-who-defied-smoking-ban-freed-from-jail-after-punters-pay-his-fine.html

Blockbuster!

I've got a brillsticks idea for a new TV show. If the Beeb could take it and run with it, I'm absolutely sure there would be enough money to pay for BBC6 Radio and the Asian Channel.

If anyone out there knows any good contacts, please let them know. I don't want any money for the idea, just the satisfaction of watching a couple of episodes will do me.

It's called "Firing Squad".

Basically, the audience watches an episode of Yesterday in Parliament and then they vote, using the telephone or the internet, on which Member they would like to see before a firing squad.

The unlucky winner is then taken outside, where (and here's the clever bit) he is placed against a wall whilst the blindfolded marksmen shoot him, or at least try to.

I suggest calls should cost 50p to pay for the bullets. Obviously, the actual executions would be televised as well, thus increasing the ratings further.

I would buy a telly to see this. Some people might say that it is a bit harsh, but really, it isn't. All anyone would need to do to avoid facing "The Squad" would be to be honest, straightforward, and decent.

Injustice

Apropos this Nick Hogan thing (Old Holborn, with or without the "L", Velvet Glove, et al), seems to me that the judiciary have got their panties in a bunch.

See http://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2010/03/number-crunching.html for more, but the Courts took into consideration a few factors other than the actual offence. They seemed not to be able to nail the perp under the normal statutes, so fiddled a few others in there too.

In history, there was another case like this. It was a long, long time ago, in a far-off land, but we have brought their judicial system, crap that it is/was, with us down the ages.

Anyway, what happened was that the anti-smoking police caught a naughty smoker. They brought him forth to the judiciary.

The judiciary asked "what charge do you bring against this naughty smoker"?"

"Err, not sure." replied the anti-smoking police. "But he's been a very naughty boy, so we brought him to you to send him down."

"Piss off." said the judge, "Deal with him yourself."

But the anti-smoking police didn't have the balls. "We caught him smoking." they cried in unison.

"Were you smoking?" asked the judge.

"Yep." said the naughty smoker.

"Really?" asked the judge, giving the naughty smoker the opportunity of getting off the hook.

"Yep." said the naughty smoker.

"Sure?" asked the judge again, now exasperated, for he really didn't think that this smoking was a terribly bad thing.

"Yep. Sure did. And I don't see owt wrong with it, either." replied the naughty smoker.

"No, nor do I, really." replied the judge. "Send him down the magistrates."

And so it went on. And eventually, the naughty smoker was banged up.

Anyone see what I did there?

Substitute the following in a story from the East, 2000-odd years ago:

• anti-smoking police: the self-righteous Jewish Elders and Chief Priests
• judge: Pontius Pilate
• the naughty smoker: Jesus Christ

The whole story can be found at Matthew 27, just after the bit where Judas hangs himself.

Fascinating parallel. Plus ca change, as the clown would say.