Drug Decriminalisation shock response - more heads recommended for self-boiling

Nicholas Green QC, the chairman of the Bar Council for England and Wales, said it was “rational” to consider “decriminalising personal drug use”.

Quite right. Locking up an addict is going to solve what exactly? Rehab? Yes. Incarceration in an establishment with EVEN GREATER access to drugs? FAIL.

But wait!

Keith Vaz MP, chairman of the Commons' Home Affairs Committee, said: “I am shocked by the suggestion that drugs should be decriminalised for personal use.

"The legalisation of drugs would simply create the mistaken impression that these substances are not harmful, when in fact this is far from the truth.”

“The answer to the issue of drug abuse is not to merely decriminalise it. This is not the best solution for the wider public or the police.”

Shocked, I tell you! Vaz decides the public are (as) stupid (as him?) and decides to support the criminalisation of people on that basis. But never passing up the chance to keep one buttock on each side of the fence, he ends it with an arse-covering soundbite so he can later jump back on the bandwagon.

James Clappison MP, a former member of the Commons’ Home Affairs Committee, said the remarks were “not entirely a helpful contribution to the debate”.
He said: “There seems to be a very strong link between recreational drug use, leading to drug addiction leading to crime fuelled by drug addiction. I would have thought the chairman of the Bar Council would have seen that for himself.”

I suspect James Clappison, MP, thinks only words in agreement with the consensus are "helpful to the debate". Clappison forgets the far higher street cost of drugs while they are illegal, which often requires criminal activity to fund. Clappison should have seen that for himself.

Philip Davies, Conservative MP for Shipley, added: “It is a ludicrous argument to say let’s legalise drugs to take pressure off the police and the courts. That is an argument to legalise everything.”

FAIL. Philip Davies, MP is expected to legislate and revise laws on our behalf and yet he displays the critical reasoning of a wasp.

Debra Bell, a mother whose son developed severe personality changes after smoking cannabis from the age of 14 with his friends, said: “What is talking about? This will send out the wrong message to youngsters.

“There are children as young as 10 getting involved in drug use. Recreational drugs are addictive – that is why there are controlled"

Ms Bell, who now runs the “Talking About Cannabis” advice website, added: “For some adults it might not be a problem, but that is not the case for children and adolescents. It divides families.”

So alcohol being legal is "the wrong message to youngsters"? Decriminalising does not mean "please take it". In fact, while it is illegal and highly lucrative, there is a vast army of scumbags out there doing just that - pushing it onto kids. Making it legal DOES mean making it controlled. Right now, drugs are out of control the very reason being they are outlawed.

Yet again a dismal display from our elected representatives. And we allow them to VOTE on our behalf?

BBC Have Your Say Hatstandery.

You could not make this up.

Added: Thursday, 16 April, 2009, 17:11 GMT 18:11 UK

Subsidise my car with £5000, of my own money???
From new Labour, Gordon, pull the other one.
Alex C, London

But it isn't your money is it? It's tax payer's money and you are but one out of millions of tax payers.

So the £5000 you are claiming is yours, it's actually more like 5000 divided by 26 million = less than 1 pence!

So you spend 1 penny and the £4999.99 is from all the other tax payers, not a bad deal is it?

Gillian T, Loddon Bridge, Reading

Recommended by 0 people

So that's all right, then!

Labour, Tories, Lib Dems: In the same hole and still digging

At PMQs we had all the big three turds leaders pontificating as to how they could convince the banks to lend as the politicians see fit. They are deluding themselves. The banks have their money now, so unless it was written in ink on the deal, the politicians can go hang. Banks need cash to maintain their reserves and repay obligations to other entities that are coming out of the woodwork, so they thumb their noses.

We now have a case of the Great Protector's New Clothes. Gordon struts around in his new weave and the crowd of politicians who all bought into it have to keep up the pretence. They cannot bring themselves to cry foul as it would explode their own position and the conceit that their bailout would not have these unintended consequences. They are like a home owner who has paid a builder for a new extension up front, only to find the builder has dug the foundations, knocked out the back wall and buggered off to another site to begin a new job. The rain is falling, the wind is blowing and the garden is a useless quagmire.

But this suits Gordon right down to the ground. He has his consensus and he will now get all party support for yet more control and nationalisation. More regulation. This closet Marxist is utterly unreformed. Guardianistas are all squirming, moist with anticipation at the prospect of a capitalist meltdown that can bring forward their Fabian dreams of an oppressed, emasculated and dispossessed lumpenproletariat dependent on the State run by themselves, the new elite.

The LibDems we always knew were "a gone case" to use the vernacular. The Tories have shown themselves to be lacking in their true convictions. They should have spoken up to let the bad debts work themselves out. We would have had one or two bank failures. Northern Rock and HBoS, likely. Maybe not even HBoS, as the Northern Rock collapse may have prompted HBoS to have got its house in order months before. That is the point. Gordon blinked first, so the banks knew he was a loser.

That would not be a problem if it were not for the fact that Gordon can use the force of law to ensure we are all losers too.

How Anatole Kaletsky can say the following in the Times today:

The good news for the world economy is that Mr Brown has become a leader of global stature, filling the policy vacuum created by the clueless dithering of the Bush Administration and the surprising failure of Barack Obama to step into the breach.

is beyond me. Brown is a disaster. A dysfunctional. Cameron has power as his goal but not backed up by principle. Power comes first, so he sacrificed principle and was swept along. Only a few weeks later and he has been painted into a corner and Gordon Brown is holding the brush.

Oh how we cried.

The Libertarian Party would not have intervened. Northern Rock would have gone to the wall and the Board would have had their comeuppance. The lesson would have been stark. The other banks would have either adjusted and dug defences or gone to the wall. The result would have been short sharp and over with.

We now have 4+ years of recession, the prospect of a 1 term Tory government. Can the Libertarian Party be ready by 2016/7? I hope so, but given the behaviour of the Tories, the EU might well have outlawed any party that does not swear allegiance to the EU and placed almost all policy and legislation beyond the remit of Westminster.

Something tells me that if the Tories try that, it will be they who experience that Romanian feeling...

Government Debt and Hazel Blears

I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and in our comforts, in our labor and in our amusements. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy. - Thomas Jefferson.

We have approaching £700bln in government debt and yet that moron, mad Hazel Blears, thinks the government has money in hand to blow on subsidising an already over-inflated property market.

Firstly, Hazel, the government never HAS anything. All it does is hold what was ours, supposedly on our behalf.

Secondly, when you owe £700bln, there is no such thing as spare change to spend. 

Thirdly, your schemes will result in getting your dirty fingernails further into people's lives. Admittedly, your administration is so bankrupt that you can only interfere in 5000 here or 10,000 there. It will be little action at a cost of £1bln, like buying a golden bucket to fend off a flood, but £1bln that would be better spent elsewhere. It will entrench the concept that "The State" will step in, that that State actually has a role at such a level. What next? Well, indeed - this opens the door to even more meddling. It opens the door to keeping this crackpot scheme going. 

House prices need to readjust. Government spending MUST fall. Government debt MUST fall. Taxation has to fall, has to be simplified and must not dampen economic activity.

Polly: Carbon Cretin.

I am going to break with my normal approach of pressing the "track changes" button, for in this case, I don't think Polly is being disingenuous or hypocritical. She is just barking mad.

Energy use has to be cut soon, so it's odd that this techno-savvy cabinet still shies away from a simple credit system.

What is with the "has to be cut"? No. Energy use will increase around the world. It is not the use of energy, but how, what and where. As for the government being "techno-savvy", one only needs to look at the dismal failures in IT and other areas to know the Government is incompetent at this. Why break a habit?

Awful August, the weather forecasters call this unseasonably cold, wet month, as holiday-makers huddle against intermittent monsoon downpours, reminded that global warming doesn't necessarily mean a Mediterranean Britain.

Post Hoc fallacy. By the way, Polly, environazis are now hiding behind the more general and weedle-worthy term "climate change".

Every month, reports from climatologists deliver worse predictions of the speed and tipping points for irreversible climate change.

They are paid to, dear.

A 4C temperature rise is the latest warning: it would bring unimaginable horror in its wake.

Would, if it were true. Is it? No proof.

The time to act gets shorter, but the political will to act lags ever further behind the science that tells politicians they must do so.

The time to act does not get shorter, it is just that the dire warnings are getting shriller and for good reason - the AGW game is nearly up.

Latest figures, including air travel, shipping and energy used in our goods manufactured abroad, show no cut in Britain but an 18% growth in emissions.

Goods manufactured abroad, eh? Like in China, perhaps. Go there and ask them to cut their output if you believe it is the case. No? Thought not.

If the market is the answer, soaring energy prices should drive down emissions. Road traffic figures showed a 2% drop in car use, with demand for petrol briefly 20% down - but already it is rising again as the price falls.

And? Your point is? The market is functioning correctly - you sound as if you WANT to see high energy prices.

On household energy - responsible for 27% of emissions - it's too early to know the effect of 30% price increases. But as one hour of an old-fashioned lightbulb still only costs 0.8p, energy prices may not be noticed by those who already consume most.

Now, Polly, you are joking right? If one hour of an old-fashioned light bulb only costs 0.8p, then surely the energy consumed is very small also. The reall issue is HEATING. Inside the above is a subconcious nagging to buy low energy, high mercury, flicker-on, shimmer while on "low energy" bulbs. Lead by example. I bet Chez Toynbee is not bedecked with such bulbs, or would remain so for long. Even Polly's dim-bulb brain can detect the hesitation caused by CFLs.

Those who will make serious cuts are the poorest and debt-averse pensioners. Official fuel poverty figures are expected to rise to 5 million people this winter: more deaths are expected among the old and cold. Back in Labour's optimistic can-do days in 2000, the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act created a legal obligation to eliminate fuel poverty among the vulnerable by 2010, a target missed by so many light years that Friends of the Earth is seeking a judicial review to get the act enforced. Gordon Brown's plan to buy off the problem with £100 vouchers for the poor is no answer.

An unenforceable Act does not mean we spend more time trying to enforce it. It means it should be scrapped.

What does the public think the answer should be? The Institute for Public Policy Research has just conducted the most extensive consultation so far, with focus groups in Newcastle, Camden, Southwark, Bristol and rural Suffolk across all social groups, as well as a nationwide opinion poll and interviews with energy companies, climate change NGOs and consumer organisations. The results pointed in one clear direction.

Seventy-four per cent said they are "very concerned" or "fairly concerned" about climate change - so politicians can ignore the shrinking, unconcerned minority.

Climate change is not the same as AGW, Polly. I am concerned about climate change, but I do not buy into the man-made back-to-the-caves mentality of the "enviro" lobby.

Seventy-one per cent thought action was necessary to curb people's energy use.

Then where is your problem? 71% will then curb their energy use, so energy use will be down. Or do you consider them like yourself - hypocritical?

But there was pessimism about the public changing its behaviour: only one in 10 thought people would drive less or take fewer flights.

Oh, ok, so "other people" need to cut back.

Naturally, favourite choices were the painless ones - the cheaper, environmentally friendly options. Least popular was any system that taxed energy use.

Common sense at last.

They were offered three possible government actions.

A false trichotomy.

First, a carbon tax could be added to all energy not generated from renewables. Second, a cap on the amount of carbon that companies could emit in selling their energy to consumers would force them to generate more from renewables: they would pass on the extra cost to consumers. But both of these were regarded as too unfair, with the impact felt least by the wealthy who burn most energy.

Very free with your use of percentages, eh? The rich are a small number in the scheme of things. Tax will either not affect them or they will move away and THEN it will not affect them. People get rich and are determined to stay rich so people like you cannot dictate how they live.

Personal carbon trading was the most popular option: it was the fairest and it wasn't seen as a new tax.

Most popular or the least worst of an appalling shortlist? In a way it is not a tax, but a form of privatised rent-seeking, as we shall see.

Here's how it works: each year everyone gets equal carbon credits to spend on petrol, home heating or air travel. People exceeding their quota can buy more credits. People who use less can sell credits. It encourages home insulation, energy saving and less driving or flying. Since low earners use less - 20% have no car, 50% don't fly - they can profit by selling to those with big houses, foreign holidays and gas-guzzling cars. It would be a powerful but voluntary agent for redistribution.

Firstly, you gloss over a massive factor in all of this - the State will need to track EVERY purchase we make in the areas so deemed by the State to have an impact. Very soon it will cover food, clothing, technology, everything. Secondly, it is NOT "voluntary" as people are not free to step outside the scheme. It will demand that all such purchases are paid electronically, so getting more information into the hands of the State (which it can, of course, sell without our permission to marketing organisations).

Failure to pursue personal carbon trading (or any other method) joined the long list of good causes killed by Labour cowardice.

I am not disputing that there is a long list of good causes killed by Labour cowardice, but this load of old crock is certainly not amongst them.

At Defra, David Miliband took it up with enthusiasm and commissioned a feasibility study, but after he made a strong speech advocating it, Gordon Brown at the Treasury banned any further mention.

Yes, I recall that "carbon credit card" idea. It was barking mad authoritarian moonbattery then, and it is still authoritarian moonbattery today.

Miliband was moved away and what was called a "pre-feasibility study", limped out with the judgment that this idea was "ahead of its time".

Yes, the Police State is not quite in place yet. Wait a few years when the EU is fully in control, then it will be a doddle.

They guessed it would cost £2bn a year to run, threw up sundry obstacles, and the report disappeared.

Only £2bln? From government IT? I wonder if those "sundry obstacles" were things like "impractical", "too expensive", "massive invasion of privacy", "AGW unproven".

Odd that a government with computers thinks it can't introduce a simple credit system, when a Nectar or Oyster card shows how easily home and car fuel bills and airline tickets could be deducted.

"A government with computers"? - Jesus wept! You forget, polly that oyster and nectar are OPTIONAL. One can still pay by cash. It is not a "simple credit system", but yes, we see the plan. I have long thought Gordon Brown has lusted after the idea of eliminating cash as a means of payment and this would move further in that direction. You also gloss over the "idea" of inter-personal trading of "carbon credits". People don't trade Nectar points on the open market, do they? Even if it did work what do you think would happen, numbnuts? The "rich" would buy up points and live as before. The poor, due to, erm, poverty, will sell points to pay for the energy that they can afford. The ONLY result is that the Government invades our life and a bunch of useless, non-productive parasites and IT supplies who cannot hack it in the private sector cream off huge wedges of taxpayers cash, some of it sticking to the governments ever-outstretched hands.

By supporting a carbon credit system, you, Polly, show yet again that you have absolutely NO IDEA how a market works and cannot get your Socialism-addled noggin to think beyond the immediate and self-serving.

Historian Mark Roodhouse of York University draws comparisons with his work on wartime rationing. Back then the state provided ration books for all, covering not just fuel but coupons valuing virtually every individual item in the shops from clothes to food.

We were under siege and supply was limited, UNLIKE NOW. Even then, the black market thrived.

Have we become more administratively incompetent since then?

Absolutely, for we now have a Government chock-full of morons, product of the dumbed-down "show-and-tell" coursework generation.

Roodhouse records the wartime internal debates about whether to cut national consumption by raising prices. "They concluded rationing was the only way to achieve dramatic cuts without feeding inflation or causing social unrest," he reports. They, too, considered making ration coupons tradable but decided equality of sacrifice was essential. But Roodhouse considers tradable carbon rations "would improve on the system, preventing black markets in unused coupons".

But this does not "improve on the system" for one is comparing apples with oranges, with actual hard scarcity and one trying to be synthesized by Authoritarian Government Fiat.

The trading element makes carbon rationing feel more voluntary and less oppressive.

Only to a moron, perhaps. "Feel" is not the same as "is". This IS involuntary and it IS oppressive.

In distribution of wealth, Britain is now back to 1937 levels of inequality, regressing backwards every year:

Yes, war followed by 60 years of the Welfare State. Well done. Thanks, you spiteful creatures!

that's what makes any kind of carbon tax or reliance on high prices impossible, the burden falling too unfairly.

Ah, so if the Socialist dream of a lumpen clay was actually achieved, higher prices could have been used. Oh what joy!

Doling out ad hoc energy vouchers to the poor at the taxpayers' expense is the wrong answer, and it only adds to the poverty trap by making the step up harder to climb.

Polly, I want to you to remember that statement and when you come up with any more ideas about redistribution and welfare, replace "ad hoc energy vouchers" with the current madcap idea that is rattling around your bonce.

Will Brown at least pay for it with a windfall tax on profiteering energy companies?

No, not even if he implemented such a windfall tax, for Brown pays for NOTHING. We, the taxpayers, pay for EVERYTHING in varying degrees. It is a zero-sum game (bit like your IQ) - energy companies will sandbag again or just not bother to build infrastructure, for how could they if Grabber Gordon keeps shoving his clunking fist into their savings and stealing all the notes?

But if personal carbon trading is "ahead of its time", that is exactly where we need to be.

It is not "ahead of its time" (unless...see above re EU), but is "a head up its arse".

Cowardly political leaders dare not tell voters the plain truth that we need to cut energy use.

It is not about telling here, Polly, you are proposing that people are FORCED. Big difference. Anyhow, since when have they got all honest?

If Miliband makes his run for the leadership, plain speaking about the climate will be one of his pitches - and bravery on personal carbon trading will be a test of candidates' seriousness about both climate and social justice.

Both "climate" and "social justice" are concepts for the subjugation of people and the removal of freedoms. I think Miliband is too smart to lash carbon credits to his leadership mast. Oh no, if he is still for it, he will bring it in once he has counted all his chickens after his premiership is hatched.

Who Will Rid Us...

...of this turbulent Priest?

The bearded old goat Archbishop of Canterbury, thinks that adoption of elements of Sharia in the UK is "inevitable".

I suppose anything bad is "inevitable" when you are a self-loathing, guilt-ridden fifth columnist like "Dr"* Rowan.

He is an imbecile. A dangerous "useful idiot", a panderer, an appeaser. I suppose he is hoping for a seat at some religious table, but you bet he would be happy with a subordinate seat, as long as he had a seat. He is a loathsome creature.

Let us not be mistaken. Anyone who thinks that Sharia will remain an option once it gets its claws into the system is a fool. It is Totalitarian creed practised by Totalitarians. I suspect it is touted as an option, a "voluntary" code as long as both sides wish it. Do you really think for an instant that this will remain so? Very soon it will become mandatory, maybe not in law, but by brute aggression. Muslims will be intimidated to conform to Sharia "courts". It is easy to see how it can be done - if you do not, you are not "muslim", but apostate...and we all know what that can lead to. Once this is entrenched, we will see demands for any dispute or legal action involving a Muslim to be performed via Sharia "courts". Sharia "courts" will become the "superior" system, and by superior I do not in any way suggest better - quite the reverse - just in terms of precedent over people's lives.

Sharia "courts" operate the inquisitional system as happens in Europe. A "judge" collects evidence and makes a judgement. There is no right to your day in court, no right to cross examine. It is not the adversarial system we have where defence and prosecution work to produce the evidence before a jury which is then advised by a judge, but who's advice the jury can decline to take. We are judged by our peers in the UK, for all its faults, not some self-absorbed, bearded totalitarian with a chip on his shoulder.

Inquisitional systems are VERY BAD for Rule of Law.

We have recently seen the moonbattery that is paying out benefits to imported illegal extra wives. We see more hints at pandering:

"If there are specific instances like stamp duty, where changes can be made in a way that's consistent with British law and British values, in a way to accommodate the values of fundamental Muslims, that is something the Government would look at." Gordon Brown.

This is the road to serfdom. Let me say that again. This is the road to Serfdom. Very soon we will see the need to get "approval" from the MCB or whohaveyou to ensure that any new tax is "Islamic". They will have a veto, or even finagle an exemption. They will get to see the budget before anyone else and their approval will be sought. It is utterly unacceptable. We saw hints of this when the MCB were worming their pimply backsides into meetings to "pre approve" anti-terror raids. MADNESS.

To "Dr" Williams, Gordon Brown, Jack "shit" Straw, the MCB and all totalitarian mysogenistic bearded goats out there I have a message for you:

If you want a disgusting inquisitional legal system, live in a place that practices it. England has the finest legal system known to mankind - HANDS OFF.

* "Dr of fairy tales" does not really wash with me, frankly.

Jacqui Smith: Useful Idiot.

...and even then no use to me.

Not a good few days for Jacqui Smith, Home Secretary.

We had her prattling on about internet censorship of "terrorists", which I suspect is going to be a scandalous, rent-seeking, opportunistic and disingenuous gold-plating exercise of the EU plan.

She blurted out that she would not feel safe walking alone at night in London. She does not have to, as she has now escaped into that protective bubble of cabinet office for which all her hypocritical colleagues clamour for. Whatever Jacqui says, crime against the person is up and, just as importantly, the police and the State in the form of the courts and CPS, are seen as at best ambivalent and increasingly hostile to the law abiding population. The resolution of all these ills lies at her door, for this is the source.

I have always felt Jacqui Smith would at a stretch be a mediocre HR Manager at a cardboard box factory in Northampton. A comment by muggeridge in the comments to an article over at the Telegraph says it very nicely:

The new Home Secretary rates as very minor amateur politician. She reflects very middle class values about this generation of i-pod lovers. The Peter principle with everyone rising to their own level of incompetence seems about right. British ministers seem to be a bunch of yes men/women like Des Browne or Tessa Jowell or Hazel Blears. Foreign Secretary Milliband should be working at the main reception at the Dorchester hotel checking out the guests*. Figures like Sir Geoffrey Howe or Sir Michael Heseltine are in short supply. PM Brown requires a non-descript team of blank faces. Apparently good life in the suburbs has made our Home Secretary as informed as a avon lady.....maybe they do live on another planet as JANET says!
Posted by muggeridge on January 21, 2008 9:11 AM

Worst of all, though, is a pitiful attempt to "do something" which only highlights her amateurish, ignorant and unthinking methods - branding terror activity "un-Islamic". An example:

At one point Mrs Smith said: "As so many Muslims in the UK and across the world have pointed out, there is nothing Islamic about the wish to terrorise, nothing Islamic about plotting murder, pain and grief.

"Indeed, if anything, these actions are anti-Islamic."

Has Jacqui Smith ever bothered to read the life of Mohammed? Clearly not.

I guess am un-Islamic** and I suspect most Muslims in the UK would be considered so too by the Islamists. Regardless, it is not for Jacqui Smith to decide who is or is not "Islamic". The fact that she is attacking un-Islamic behaviour is so utterly stupid, because it would need her and her cronies to decide who is or is not exempt from "un-Islamic behaviour" or what sort of un-Islamic behaviour needs action to be taken. It is totally unworkable. It does not need such a label - if people of whatever religion or political creed kill random citizens then that is a crime. Period.

I do think Useful Idiot Jacqui has listened too much to organisations like the MCB. For them they must be licking their lips, for if you start using this frame of reference, they will need to be called in to 'decide' what is and what is not. Access to classified on going investigations perhaps? Who knows. I do not think this is by accident. Jacqui Smith has used the term and I really do suspect that very soon the MCB will worm itself into the loop.

The best weapon against home grown jihadis, IMHO, is ridicule. If the MCB gets splattered by a heavy dose, then that is their lookout.




*Yes, Miliband checking out guests. You would certainly not want to have him checking them IN for fear of losing business.

** for I am a Libertarian beer-drinking bacon sarni eater who believes in Rule of Law.

More Points on the Graph of Statism Pt.5: Internet Access

We now hear of plans to give every child internet access at home.

Of course, anything the State does is not giving, though, is it?* This could well be even more sinister than that.

The State is in truth saying that they plan to force Taxpayers to pay for internet access for every child at home. The parents will be asked to pay towards it, too. Do you think this payment will be in some way means tested? I expect the lower to middle earners will get thoroughly shafted by this as with so many aspects of State largesse and taxation.

The report goes on:

In an interview with the Guardian, Knight signalled that the government was putting pressure on IT firms to bring down the cost of equipment if internet connections are in effect made compulsory for nearly six million children.

I detect that the Government has come up with a plan - sold to them by IT companies, p'raps? - which demands every home to have broadband so some groaning, bloated monstrosity can be implemented. Instead of thinking of ways that do not require universal broadband, or working out some other strategy, the Government just decides to conduct mission creep - more like a mission marathon - and bootstrap this in, conveniently. Indeed, I suspect a great big national IT project forced upon schools is behind all this, a massive database on child records, attitudes, performance, targets etc etc etc. More admin for teachers. Yet more data to get lost. More control over independent schools. The broadband in each home, and with that the need for a computer - and how many sorts will "forget" that they have one already and flog it on eBay? - looks like the tip of a very expensive iceberg, if you ask me, in fact the tip looks bloody expensive as it is!**

The minister chunters:

"Obviously you need to make that affordable, you need to make that universal otherwise you just advantage those who can afford it. To some extent that's the case at the moment, where 50% of homes have got IT broadband, but they are hugely powerful educational tools ... we know from the research evidence the difference that information technology can make."

"otherwise you just advantage those"? Jesus wept. No, it is not "obvious" that you need to "make it" universal. The State making it universal is lazy thinking***, Infantilising and Authoritarian. Don't get me wrong, it would be great if it were universal and that all parents would see that broadband for their kids was more important than Sky+. Grief, one trip to MacDonalds a month would pay for broadband. Couple of packs of B&H, even. 4 pints in a pub. A month. If parents are keen as to check up on homework set, I think that £10pcm could be found in all but the most desperate of cases - and then why not via charity - but we know this is not how the government works: they like "entitlement", a client state and dependency. They crave control and power.

Knight said there were "some crunchy negotiations ahead" with the big firms but said the government could in effect procure millions of new customers for them.

So those who are paying for the IT, the Taxpayers, are not to chose which company or companies, but the State steps in and awards contracts "on our behalf"? Marvellous. Watch how the power of markets is swept aside and quality of service, rapid roll-out of new technology and low pricing are discarded once a captive market is obtained, a disconnect between those paying and those providing is put in place. Imbeciles! Of course the State is not all stupid - it will have just wedged itself into another niche, an arbiter, a gatekeeper between the purchasers and the providers. With such gatekeeping comes patronage. Corruption is not far away. Maybe it is not imbecilic, but just utterly careless and reckless with our money in pursuit of its aims. As usual.

For sure we all should know by now the State is a USELESS shopper and that new technology comes at a pace that outstrips the painfully slow negotiation mechanisms. What will we see? Old kit at higher prices than new kit? 50:1 or 100:1 contention ratios for this "service" that could hardly be given away? Who knows, but the fact is, as the State buys it, the taxpayers are locked in and must pay under threat of being locked up.

All this so some greasy IT company can win a contract to not deliver an overambitious and potentially invasive yet insecure project who's cost will spiral out of all proportion except to the ego of the commissioning Minister.

And when all is done, something given for free is often not respected.

Over to one side, yet equally poisonous, is the ever lurking excuse idea of "protecting the children" from the truth internet. The State wants to provide all children with broadband so of course it will protest its "duty of care" to "protect" children from "influences" - watch how this will be used to slip in censorship, monitoring, propaganda via a "walled garden" of "approved materials" and all manner of Statist, Totalitarian and Police State hooks. Coming Next: Illegal to have an open internet connection in a home containing children? I would not put it past them. The EU is salivating as we speak about the possibilities of locking down the Internet to entrench their bankrupt ideology.

* The State "giving" actually involves taking, often without consent. The State cannot "Give" anything, for it does not have anything of its own to give. All it has at its disposal is tax, which is not given, but taken and assets and authority on loan from the electorate.

** I bet it will not be fully Mac compatible, too, especially if those scumbags at Microsoft or Accenture have their dirty fingernails in the pie.

*** Do the key advantages need a broadband connection and with it a PC? Surely text messages convey the key points? By the time this gets in place, it might be cheaper just to provide it over mobiles. It appears to be a bootstrapping WIBNI fest.

Fencepost No.5: US Kidnapping.

The US has admitted in a UK Court of Appeal that the Supreme Court of the US has declared, unilaterally, that it has the right kidnap people abroad and specifically the UK and render them back to the US for trial.

Considering examples of the Nat West Three, this can include crimes committed abroad, by foreigners upon foreigners or foreign registered legal entities.

This is a further entrenchment of US Extraterritoriality.

US Extraterritoriality is arrogant and Imperial. They are their own worst enemies. What would, what CAN their defence be if Iran, China or any other country adopted similar laws? America cannot in any reasonable fashion declare that only they can have such powers of Extraterritoriality. Their concept of Extraterritoriality appears to be an expedient response with untold and unintended consequences.

Should other countries adopt the mechanism, the checks and balances of Extradition, such as they are, would become sidelined. If extreme force is used to apprehend, such actions can tip over into assassination. America appears to be pro-actively letting the genie out of the bottle. If we slide towards anarchy and Imperialism, America will be responsible for greasing that slope.

Ron Paul is campaigning for a return to the American Constitution. The American Constitution and Bill of Rights contains many aspects of our own BoR that was laid down in 1689. Both appear to suggest this law unconstitutional.

In permitting this, the Supreme Court of the United States of America has shown itself to be a bunch of blithering IMBECILES.

The CDs of Doom: An example of utter ignorance

Yes, the data loss is being done to death, but this nugget just lept out and bit me, via Tim Worstall:

It has since emerged that the National Audit Office, which had asked for the CDs, had specifically requested that bank details and other sensitive data be removed from them when it asked for other copies of the Child Benefit database in March, but a senior manager refused to do so on cost grounds.

On cost grounds? Removal of certain items of data from each record (or a query only selecting the required ones)? Erm. Anyone with even the remotest knowledge of computer databases would suspect that to select a subset of fields is easy.

Any script kiddie could probably get the documentation, read up the record formats and knock up a bit of code in under an hour to sift it, and I would expect the person who got the data out could have just submitted the right query.

I wonder if this was seen as too expensive because the Manager in question asked one of their "Consultants" for a quote. Knowing them this would entail doing a needs analysis, talking to the customer, writing a functional spec, test plan, documentation, project plan etc etc etc. Probably about 2 weeks work all told at £1,200/day. Lets say £20grand between mates (sandbagging upon sandbags).


That, or they were just angling to get some "income" to their cost centre.

IMBECILES!

HMRC Fiasco double-take

Via The Register->Samizdata

BBC4 just interviewd HMRC and HMRC will re-imburse any taxpayer who suffers a loss.
Who do HMRC get their money from again?






p.s. I include Hazel Blears as a link as this event is so hat-stand non-sequitur moonbatteration presented with bare-faced cheek that Hazel has to be involved somewhere.

UK Taxpayers to fund 7m EU Training places.

Frank Dobson was on Daily Politics today and he did the best he could, but the poor chap could not hide the fact that the latest Government "scheme" for training people is a disaster in the making. Due to EU law, the taxpayer funded "7m training opportunities" "for British workers" can be taken up by anyone in the EU and there is nothing anyone can do about it, not even the employer.

Frank did try and suggest that employers would select people locally, but he surely knows that is actually against the law now, due to traitorous scumbags like him and his self-loathing Sociofascist lickspittles who have capitulated to the EU and allowed it, not the UK Parliament, to decide what happens here.

So, we are to be forced to fund the training of people from outside the UK. Dobson says hardly any will come, but then they said only around 15,000 people would come from the new EU member states.

They really are traitorous scumbags. If it were Frank Dobson's own personal money on the line, he'd think twice, but it is not AND he is just an also-ran lackey who will do anything to retain is position on the greasy pole.

Northern Rock: More bailouts

Good grief, Sociofascists never learn.

£20 bln on its way to Northern Crock and another £10bln likely to be used to buy up sub-prime garbage until some "investor" gets the entire portfolio for thre'pence ha'penny. This will be because the "simple shopper" that is the State loses its bottle, broons its troos and caves in to a fire sale at OUR EXPENSE. Witness, I predict, the buyer turn around the deal and make billions in profit as the assets are either disposed of or otherwise handled properly.

Gordon Brown and his "mini-mean" Darling have just created a Nationalised version of Farepak, and we are the losers compelled, on pain of imprisonment, to pay.

Foreign National Jails

As you may know already, there seems to be a hidden agenda to create separate jails for foreign nationals.

There also seems to be the suggestion of deportation, but I doubt if all the issues have been sorted out or enough hearts bled over this yet.

The development is sinister and dangerous in my view.

Firstly, it opens up the system to accusations that either foreigners are treated worse or locals worse. Due to the resources available and the limitless energy of the self-loathers, I suspect the State will just make sure that foreign national jails are consistently better. Its easier. Far less 'action groups' and QANGOs out there to worry about. Net result: foreign prisoners will get better conditions and treatment.

Secondly, pound to a penny we will see calls for "Muslim" or "Islamic" jails. Once this is established, these will need to be better than BOTH the foreign AND indigenous jails to avoid yet more moaning. All manner of problems will occur and very soon hop-skip-jump the various "Muslim leaders" will be calling the tune and demanding, well, the end to the demands will never happen. Not only that, the jails will then be considered "political" and "oppressive" and misreported.

The best way is to treat each according to their behaviour and the crime committed. Simple. Forget race, colour, nationality, diet (they should all be on a vegetarian diet, so to hell with the meat aspects), direction of toilets etc and just treat people the same. Best way to avoid any accusations of discrimination - and we know accusation becomes established fact in the minds of many - is to put people in the same buildings and under the same regimes.

As in so many areas, New Labour are imbeciles. They appear to have absolutely NO common sense whatsoever.

March of the EU Superstate: Localising Income Taxation

We hear the abysmal Chris Wales (Android, architect of Gordons Pensions raid, windfall utility taxes...Belsen Guard...no?) proposing the idea that Local Councils should be able to collect the Income Tax and be combined to attract a higher quality of scumbag Councillor, to be like Scotland. Scotland? Oh, yes, an EU Region.

The Central government will be responsible for property taxation. Nice. They know where you live...

I am almost lost for words. I am lost for words. The entire proposal is so wrong on so many levels and is so blatantly a move to creating Regions and for breaking up England.

The best way to localize is to localize right into my wallet. Get out of my way so I can be responsible for deciding where my money goes. The Government should only do things it HAS to do, not what it thinks it CAN and feels it MUST.

We are in real danger from these Sociofascists and the official Opposition are USELESS.

The Milk of Human Blindness

The Times reports today (via, Tim Worstall), that faceless interfering ricebowlers at DEFRA are seriously suggesting that the milk industry shift, as they so quaintly put it "to ensure that some 90 per cent of milk on sale will not require refrigeration by 2020".

This means we will be expected to switch to that god-awful UHT. Currently 93% of our milk is fresh. We consume fresh milk despite all the inconveniences because it is infinitely better than UHT, which, to me, has one purpose, to both colour and reduce the bitterness of bad warm drinks sometimes passed off as tea or coffee. Fresh milk is better to me because it tastes good. I can drink a pint of fresh milk and sometimes get a primordial desire to do so, but I can barely tolerate 5g of UHT. However, DEFRA wish to change consumer behaviour and force us to go backwards, to accept substandard food and drink in the name of the Great Green God. No, not really, but upon the dogma of that "religion" in reducing our sin carbon footprint.

DEFRA appears to have been infested with that mind virus, the Green Religion of Unthought. This is "Global Warning" - not Global Warming, but the trend now for using the threat of some future as an excuse and cover for, basically, totalitarian, authoritarian or just plain Robber Baronetcy.

What I see, apart from the blatant social engineering, undermining, guilt, bullying, memes, insults and just plain Fascism, is a convenient way to destroy our fresh milk habit and industry. The aim, I suspect, is to turn the UK into a market for ghastly UHT from anywhere in the EU. Right now, European calcified water and fat emulsions UHT is pretty much ignored in the UK and rightly so. One reason, apart from the fact that UHT is just plain shyte, is, I suspect, tea.

The UK are tea drinkers. Unlike coffee, tea is almost always drunk with milk and that milk needs to be fresh milk unless you are a self-flagellating zealot who is happy to train your taste buds to accept mediocrity or worse in the pursuit of your punishment dietary regime.

One of the excuses for this issue is the energy used in refrigeration. I suspect this is a bit of a con, really. A refrigerator is just a mover of heat, not a creator of cold. If you chill the contents you are warming the outside. If you want to reduce the amount of pumping losses, then you create more efficient refrigerators using such wonderful devices as Stirling Engines or, duh, put DOORS ON THEM. You do NOT use the PATHETIC excuse of "carbon footprint" to try and destroy an industry which exists solely due to consumer choice (note that) so that the world can bend to fit the prejudices, plans and non-sequiturs of a bunch of imbeciles at DEFRA.

Pound to a penny there is an EU directive at the bottom of this.

UPDATE: The BBC covered this at 1PM today, but just parroted the government lie line and had no real exposure, almost like a softening up exercise. Self-loathers!

Polly: Dead Social Democracy - Track Changes ON

This was the week that Labour's leaders left a bankrupt dogma social democracy for dead

Brown's capitulation to the Tory veneer agenda and refusal to make the case for yet more levelling down equality has exposed the lie shipwrecked his party

Polly Toynbee
Friday October 12, 2007
The Guardian

This was more than a horrible yet totally justified humiliation for the prime minister. This was the week that the bankrupt dogma that is social democracy ebbed away in England. Those words had already slipped from Labour's list of disingenuous platitudes lexicon, never spoken by its leaders in public, rarely spoken outside the privacy of Fabian meetings and Celtic parliaments.
In 1994 Tony Blair and Gordon Brown purged socialism when they forged the New Labour project: Clause Four was indeed an archaic nonsense. This week Brown and Darling all but killed off the pretense of social democracy too. We now have finally in the open a centrist government in Europe's most stubbornly non-Communist unequal country. Our government stands somewhat to the right of Ghengis Khan Angela Merkel's coalition in Germany, to the right of economic policy in France who isn't this side of PRNK, where Nicolas Sarkozy has absorbed social democrats. Fusion politics, like fusion music and food, is one utterly preposterous description of this strange death of the centre-left. At least in Europe there are leftwing parties still to trot out the lies make the public arguments: in England, due to our malfunctioning electoral system, a political generation has at least partially resisted total subjugation to the relentless fisting that is barely heard the case for social justice. Fusion is turning out to be Brown's "change" (Is Polly about to twig that "change" does not mean "improvement"...der-errr).

To not take from give the children of the well-off a £1.4bn inheritance waiver bonus while the children of the poor only got another 48p a week in tax credits taken without permission or consent from taxpayers is symbolically far worse to my pandering, addled, class-war confused noodle than that notorious 75p for pensioners. The halfway mark to abolish child poverty by 2010 will be missed by miles regardless. Holding down public sector pay rises to 2% for three years, only half next year's expected private sector increase, will redress the balance increase inequality. To cut capital gains tax on buy-to-let property, antiques, paintings and jewellery is as irritating to my envy-meter shameless as it is dysfunctional.
The comprehensive spending review every three years is mightily important. There is no company, parasite arts organisation, now beholden entity charity or disfunction of the state that does not hang upon its judgment. It was even delayed several months for political advantage to get it right for the conference season, causing serious budgeting problems to many bloodsucking balance sheets. Then at the last moment in a few days of hysteria, it all seemed to be done on the back of a matchbox as usual. One of the many unintended consequences of the en ntire New Labour project rushed capital gains change, it emerged yesterday, was the adverse effect on SAYE schemes (save-as-you-earn share ownership, for lower-paid employees). Private equity types laughed all the way to their merchant banks, having expected a much higher tax than 18%. Insert totally exposed, disingenuous, busted and utterly fraudulent meme for political advantage or as an expression of utter contempt or ignorance for financial realities They still pay less than their cleaners.

There is a stunned disorientation among Labour MPs as usual, alarmed by both Brown's vision void and his expected sudden incompetence. Talk to ministers and wise old heads of Commons select committees, and they are reeling with shock it took this long to be obvious. The backbenches sat through Darling's politics-free performance on Tuesday like the Animal Farm beasts gazing through the farmer's window in the final scene so no change there then. Far too late they realised something awful was happening before their eyes: you could have cut their silence with a knife its THE silence, Polly, THE silence...and you are a PAID scribbler???.

How has Gordon Brown managed in such a short time to shipwreck himself and his party (as if we did not know)? The seriousness of it is only beginning to sink in to my scatterbrain after Labour's long hegemony. Bungling the will-he-won't-he election was a hardly survivable self-inflicted injury. The intellectual and ethical bankrupcy injury is the real damage. Retreating armies raze the ground behind them to deny their enemy forage: but what Brown and Darling have done for the last 10 years did on Tuesday was to flame-throw the ground ahead, right up to the far horizon beyond the next election. They have nowhere to go, nothing to feed on, no narrative path ahead, no clear political turf to occupy so they will steal from us and lie as usual.

Start with the character question - politically the most lethal. For his first three months Brown was "the change" the public liked - a welcome no-glitz, slightly clumsy but honest contrast in a celebrity age. But when Cameron threw "phoney" at him in Prime Minister's Questions, it stuck like napalm. He could duck the bottles thrown over his election funk, but "phoney" will stick because his comprehensive spending review smacked of the same old panicky, comprehensive cowardice but I have just realised it because I smell a change in the air and want to be on the bandwagon . He has lost his character just when he needs trust to strengthen his arm for the coming European treaty row. His party is suddenly gripped by the realisation that doubt that the big brain never had has a strategy. Looking back on his content-light conference speech, it asks what he has been thinking this past impatient decade.

Inheritance tax is a Labour talisman: it deeply pains sanctimonious, envy-riddled and irrational social democrats to let the principle of posthumous wealth redistribution go unstolen. But it had become toxic in the 60 marginals - partly Labour's fault for never making the case for paying this or any other tax. It was too late to win the argument once the rightwing press had falsely persuaded even those with little that they were among the 6% liable.

Here is what Brown should have said: "I resign understand this tax is widely and reasonably if unreasonably hated, so we will cut it. Instead of well-off couples setting up trusts to double their allowances, we will give the same right to all without recourse to lawyers. But to be irrational, theiving bastards fair, the well-off must pay more in life, if not after death. So we will add an economy crushing a top income-tax band for earnings over £100,000." Then he should have said: "My pretense mission is fairness, education levelling down success for all and the totally unachievable given the methods and measurement of the abolition of child poverty in our time. So I will hypothecate that new top tax rate to spend on funding a dependent, client population tax credits and wasteful, undemocratic social programmes to improve children's drift into dependency and fecklessness life chances to reach that great goal of a totally beholden client State full of listless, lumpenillitariat."

It would have dumbfounded anybody the Tories for the sheer barking moonbattery of it all. Instead Brown gave away much more than money: he gave away the argument he never had a right to. He let inheritance tax go for nothing in exchange, a missed chance to talk of growing inequality just talk, mind, not actually fix it.

We may have a centrist government, but this budget had good things only a Labour administration would do - foreign aid to be ashamed proud of, insert plug for some luvvie I met at a Hampstead dinner party Richard Layard's therapy for depressives, a boost for parasites the arts, funding and encouragement to create more help for working single parents, and still more children falling into dependency behind.

The black hole at its heart was less the Institute of Fiscal Studies complaint about overborrowing because we don't want to talk about all that, now, do we?, more the blurring of any inspiring contrast with the opposition i.e. business as usual. It failed to do enough for his first priorities i.e. business as usual, again. His centrepiece housing policy is in fact a cunt, with less money for social homes. His education "passion" looks thin next to the populist sop necessity that gave health the lion's share. A review leading to the costs of better-off old people being paid will be popular, though there is no money for it for years ahead i.e. business as usual. And it redistributes to the better-off, another backward step on my vindictive form of Communism for the proles only equality.

Because we live in dread hope, Gordon Brown can pick himself up and start all over again, if he has the utter bare-faced nerve and the political will. The Tories may crow now, but they too have real problems. What can they offer next? Tax cuts were their trump card, so now the party will press sensibly dangerously for more.

Time is on Labour's side: mercurial political moods shift at the speed of light. Soon Brown could start to spell out a vision, with more authentic humility but then I woke up. He has tied his own hands financially, which makes bold moves hard but not impossible for next year's budget and I bet he manages to have a good deal of nosemining in the process.

What happened this week accelerates the need for a Turner-type inquiry into tax. Choices need to be aired so people can understand and support a fairer system where the poorest no longer pay a higher proportion than the rich. This much Gordon Brown owes to those he disappointed this week.

polly.toynbee@guardian.co.uk


Yes, Polly, a fairer system - flat tax as a starter and then abolish the entire mess that is income tax and tax credits!

I'm going green...

..cos I'm about to hurl my breakfast:

From the Sunday Times:

Zac Goldsmith inherited his concern for the environment from his Uncle Teddy, his political zeal and fortune from his father James and his looks from his mother Annabel.

Shame he ran out of relatives in the common sense, wisdom and brains departments, then.

The report is out. I will be reading it before commenting further.

If X bureaucrats take money from a bottomless pit for N months...

The Devil's Kitchen is the appropriate place to give the latest tripe boiled up by the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills the roasting it deserves. The BBC were serving up the State Propaganda this morning, too.

So they think that some cookbooks require GCSE English do they? The Reptile immediately and quite rightly nails the fact that the Department of Irritation, Uselessness and Skiving have plenty of other things to do, like FIX THE EDUCATION SYSTEM YOU MUPPETS!§ Instead, they conveniently find a reason to fill their bookshelves with all the latest and trendiest titles research cookbooks. I want to see all those books donated to a library. I want evidence.

To be honest I do find Deliah's recipes irritating and presumptive. I do not think that is about GCSE levels at all, but just about good writing and clarity. Asides do not matter to me, as long as they are not the kind that says "and using the [undocumented preparation stage] which you made [long time] earlier". Long sentences do not phase me, for, it must me said, I am guilty as any other for creating long and multi-clause sentences which, I suspect, has something, if not everything, to do with my taking Latin. Big words and complex adjectives are not the issue either, for I like such things and relish the opportunity to expand my vocabulary (I suspect that someone could pass GCSE English these days and not even have the word "vocabulary" in their vocabulary...).

Somehow I suspect this is a subliminal attempt to make people think GCSE is "difficult" and so shore up the reputation of the exam.

Deliah's guff is harder to read not because it requires GCSEs, but because, if you ask me, Deliah is a crap writer who faffs about, who introduces her undocumented preps halfway through and presumes you know how to do it. Lets be honest about this: Ramsay is a chef, Deliah is a cook, or should we really say a writer about cooking. Deliah washed up, waitressed and "helped" in a kitchen before, I suspect, some mate at The Mirror threw her a lifeline. I can help in a kitchen. I am pretty good at prep, in fact (YES CHEF!). I do think I could write a better cookbook that our Deal. A cookbook for blokes. But why bother, cos Ramsay has done it already.

I wonder if there is any pattern here - some say womens' cookbooks are more confusing than mens'. Do you think this may be down to the fact that if a man writes a cookbook, he is almost always a professional chef, whereas it is not the same case for the women? Professional chefs require speed, simplicity, efficiency, order and consistency. As does any bloke in a kitchen. Deliah is either Labour or Lib Dem, I am certain. She is a Ladder-Kicker, but we cannot have the Government report on Ladder-Kicking, can we? Oh no.

§ you should be working towards ensuring our Universities are not incorrectly incentivised to produce narrow, specific, time-limited and, frankly, training-course substitute "Degrees" like "Golf Management" to pigeon-hole people and make them easy to manipulate.

Have the BBC sold an hour...

...of Sunday Morning to some daytime television production company?

First it was the hijacking of "Heaven and Earth" by that self-important daytime incompetent and egotist Gloria Hunniford. A programme about spirituality and religion becomes a vehicle for her personal aggrandizement and nobody seems to see it and nobody does much about it.

"Heaven & Earth" becomes "Gloria Hunniford's Heaven & Earth". Q: WHY? A: Ego. Rant from Roger and others I suspect means it ended its days as "Heaven & Earth with Gloria Hunniford" but the intro credits were remained a vomit-inducing parade of self-centred, smug, sanctimonious, patronising posturing with one aim: "Look at MEEEEEEEE".

So, finally Gloria Hunniford in Gloria Hunniford's Heaven and Earth with Gloria Hunniford presented by Gloria Hunniford Gloria Hunniford (I swear this is almost how it was introduced each day to the sound of used fivers being stuffed in the sweaty mit of the announcer) is now replaced by some Kilroy-Silk wannabe doing a Kilroy format "discussion" about vaguely faith-related issues. Daytime seems to have established a bridgehead on Sunday mornings at 10am, meaning there is an hour break between the Politics slot and Countryfile (harmless enough - a sort of rural adult Newsround) then the Politics Show where Jeremy Vine tries to Paxo people and fails - I wish he would get stuffed most of the time.

This gap is annoying, as it sometimes coincides with my having a piping hot, fresh cup of tea and some bacon sarnies. I want to have something reasonable to look over my Times at now and again and not to choke on my hard-won bacon. If you are going to do a discussion on religious and faith-related issues, get a decent format and get a decent presenter, like Jeremy Clarkson...