George Osborne: what a tosser.

(Via Councillor Bob)

I see the inquest into the deaths of ten servicemen on a Hercules transport plane shot down in Iraq has reached its conclusions.

To be honest, I’ve always wondered why the inquest was really needed. Former Defence Secretary John Reid told us more than two years ago how and why these men were killed.

It was because the UK was stupid enough not to fight in Vietnam. Who can argue with a mind capable of such cast-iron bastardy?

When I linked to Chris Morris’ appeal to raise cash for his new film, BenSix said he suspected it was trap.

I’m tempted to think the same when I see non-believers queuing up to throw cash to pay for posters on the sides of London buses. I worry the whole campaign has been orchestrated by Christian fundamentalist provocateurs who want to show that atheists are also an ovine collective who want to ram their ideology down people’s throats. (And what’s with that sodding ‘probably’? Are you atheist or not?)

We’re not a bloody club for chemical chance’s sake. If that’s what you want as an atheist why not go back to church for the weak tea, digestive biscuits and small talk, and treat the rest of it like a poetry club or something?

You advance atheism by breeding it out - use it as a Dawkinsite meme and give it to your kids. Who are these posters supposed to persuade anyway? Is this a missionary initiative? How many converts are we expecting? Are we in for a spate of believers, upon glanicing at a passing bus, suddenly slapping their foreheads and declaring, ‘Of course! I’ve been wasting my weekends all these years!’?

I humbly suggest not.

Looks like my blog software went berserk overnight and turned off all the commenting. No idea how that happened. Hopefully things are back on now.

Via Tim we get this too good to miss opportunity:

CHRIS MORRIS JIHADI COMEDY TO BE A WARPFILMS CINEMA FEATURE

Following rumours in the press and online Warp Films can confirm that Chris Morris’ comedy about british jihadis is being made by Warp Films as an independently funded cinema feature. The script has been written by Chris in collaboration with Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain and is now ready to shoot. Production will begin as soon as we are fully funded. To that end we are running a number of investment schemes including donations which give you the chance to be in the film.

mail enquiries to: fundingmentalism@warpfilms.com
Please pass this on to ten people

They’re asking ‘£25 to fund and appear in the film’. Bargain.

Are they willing conspirators or were they brainwashed by western intelligence agencies?

It’s nice of Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs to cut people some slack with their accounts. After all, there are some of us who can get in an awful pickle when it comes to figures.

Bada-bing! They tried to mess with Big Peter and look where it got them. They pulled a knife, Mandelson pulled a gun.

What were they thinking? This guy was quietly assassinating minor Labour Party officials before David Cameron and George Osborne’s balls had dropped. Amateurs.

Jim Jay on immigration minister Phil Woolas’s nascent demagoguery:

Clearly if there is a global economic crisis people are going to blame immigrants rather than the institutions who created those chaotic financial systems? Only if you encourage them Phil. Otherwise people might think someone sorting potatoes has not had much to do with the global economic meltdown.

We can probably look forward to a lot of more of this in the run up to the next election. The financial crisis is so complicated it’s difficult to know where to pin the blame. So let’s keep it nice and simple: blame bloody foreigners. It was something that the Thatcher government used to like to wheel out to shore up the vote. Labour used to hate them for it.

Me, I skimmed the BBC article a little too quickly. This from Woolas…

This government isn’t going to allow the population to go up to 70 million.

…put me in mind of a eugenics programme. The fantasy of cabinet ministers being voluntarily neutered and spayed as an example to the rest of us was an appealing one. I’m talking about physically neutered and spayed obviously. We all know they were ideologically and morally sterilised a while back.

James Purnell, the work and pensions secretary, is trying to take the sting out of the fiery suppository of impending mass unemployment. His grasp of reality remains impeccable:

When asked how the middle classes would cope with unemployment, Purnell said he was optimistic that £100m of government money allocated to helping the recently-unemployed retrain would smooth the transition.

A whole £100 million? Wow. That works out at, what, a whole sixty quid for each person currently out of work. So what are people going to retrain as with all that cash? Purnell’s got a list…

“They may want some retraining to become a driving instructor or there may be people who are in banking that want to go into another form of banking and [the training will] help them make a quick change,” Purnell added.

The bankers (nice to see someone in the government is thinking of the bankers, the poor neglected souls) are going to retrain as … bankers and everybody else is going to be… driving instructors? You have to admit it’s brilliant. The banks might have got themselves a whole economic war cabinet but why would the unemployed need one when we’ve got a Field Marshall Montgomery-like strategist in the form of James Purnell?

(more…)

Soon we’ll be shipbuilding:

The Tory leader also hit out at “unsustainable” immigration-fuelled growth and the demise of manufacturing jobs.

“We’ve got to broaden our economic base to include more science, more hi-tech services, more green technologies, more engineering and more high-value manufacturing, drawing upon a much wider range of industries, markets, people, towns and cities.”

Somebody had to say it, I just can’t believe it was the leader of the Conservative Party, a man who still worships at the alter of the Scourge of the Miners.

I tell you that there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who don’t need to repent. I just wonder how the miners, dockers and steelworkers who were tossed away by the Tories, like so many champagne corks and protestations of compassion, in favour of merchant bankers, hedge-funders, and other smoke and mirror salesmen are feeling after hearing Dave launch his plan.

(Alex has more. I wouldn’t recommend reading the whole speech. It’s a bit like John Fowles’ The Magus - much less profound than it thinks it is and you’ll hate yourself when you get to the end.)

When Gordon Brown became prime minister, he promised to…

…build trust in our democracy, I’m sure we need a more open form of dialogue with citizens and politicians to genuinely talk about problems and solutions. It is about a different type of politics, a more open and honest dialogue…’

So what the hell happened? Take the government’s consultation on nuclear power for example. It’s bent…

Late yesterday we received an astonishing response to our complaint to the Marketing Research Standards Board about the government’s second public consultation on nuclear power. The board sets the standards for opinion research and found that the market research company Opinion Leader Research breached the Code of Conduct. The board said Opinion Leader “information was inaccurately or misleadingly presented, or was imbalanced, which gave rise to a material risk of respondents being led towards a particular answer.”

Is that an ‘open form of dialogue with citizens’ and politicians talking ‘genuinely’ about ‘problems and solutions’? Is is ‘a different type of politics’ and ‘a more open and honest dialogue’?

I’m going to hazard a ‘no’.

A thought experiment:

You live within 20 kilometres of a uranium mine. Tests have shown that your drinking water contains up to seven times the World Health Organisation’s limit for uranium contamination. The company running the mine have tested the water themselves but have not informed you of the findings. They have not properly implemented health monitoring for the mine’s workers or local residents. Documents show that the company knew from the outset that contamination of the water supply was a risk. The local hospital is not accredited to diagnose or treat cancer.

What should you do?

Obama and his supporters shouldn’t put the champagne on ice just yet. Here’s the mighty Greg Palast:

While Obama dreams of riding to the White House on a wave of new voters, more then 2.7 million have had their registrations REJECTED under new procedures signed into law by George Bush. Kennedy, a voting rights lawyer, charges this is a resurgence of ‘Jim Crow’ tactics to wrongly block Black and Hispanic voters.

[...]

The investigators level a deadly serious charge:

“If Democrats are to win the 2008 election, they must not simply beat McCain at the polls - they must beat him by a margin that exceeds the level of GOP vote tampering.”

Palast doesn’t muck about with this stuff - he was one of the few guys to get to the very bottom of the 2000 scandal. He was also the reporter who broke the New Labour Lobbygate disgrace. The name Derek Draper might be familiar…

When you see what passes for civilised debate in the comments on Iain Dale’s blog, this isn’t entirely surprising:

I can confirm that the current position is that Total Politics does not formally subscribe to the system of regulation overseen by the PCC.

Over 98% of titles do subscribe to the PCC and the Code. We also handle complaints informally against titles that do not subscribe.

Got a complaint about something said about you in Iain Dale’s magazine? If he doesn’t agree, you’re stuffed. Just like on his blog. I wonder if he’ll be calling any of his magazine readers a ‘prick‘ or a ‘bitch‘?

So how the hell did we end up with Harriet Harman? And why?

Simon Carr makes a fair point about us all now owning big slices of the banks:

[W]ho are the Government directors on these bank boards looking after? Legally they’re supposed to be looking after the company’s shareholders. So, shouldn’t they be insisting the bank uses every offshore method of avoiding tax? Or denouncing the Office of Fair Trading for attempting to extract refunds for £2bn worth of “unfair charges”? And demanding fast repossessions and overdraft cancellation and higher fees and high dividends to attract investors?

I’m the kind of financial wizard who’s paid probably thousands in bank charges over the years. If I continue to pursue my claim to get them back, am I only punishing myself? Shouldn’t I be demanding I pay back my overdraft? If we don’t make sure our company maximises its profits we’re actually breaking the law. We’re legally obliged to impoverish, evict, and tax-avoid.

So…

I’m gonna sit write down and write myself a letter [1].
And make believe it came from you [2].
I’m gonna write words oh so sweet [3].
They’re gonna knock me off my feet [4].
A lotta kisses on the bottom [5].
I’ll be glad I got ‘em [6].

(And then I’ll charge myself a few quid for the administration.)

[1] On headed notepaper, demanding immediate repayment of my overdraft.
[2] My fellow shareholders.
[3] You know that malevolent reasonableness?
[4] Particularly when I see the charges being levied.
[5] Oh yes, I’m going to have to smooch some serious arse. Pucker up, buttercup.
[6] Who doesn’t like being sucked up to?

…please. You miserable, idle, misanthropic, dirty, dirty bastards. What is it with people when they can’t take 30 seconds to wash their own shit off their fingers? What are the pressing matters that can’t wait that long? Really, I’d genuinely like to know.

What if support for the far right by ordinary people all over Europe owes less to tyrannical multiculturalism than it does to their cretinous desire to blame all of their personal problems on blacks, PC do-gooders, gays, Poles, criminal-loving lawyers, gypsies and Muslims, to name but a few?

I mean, the implications here are vast, almost beyond my comprehension. It would mean that, rather than being reasonable, decent people driven to desperate measures by forces beyond their control, voters for far right parties would actually be just, well, angry, racist retards.

Read the rest…

“There is another great plot building up again and we are monitoring this.”

Now then. This massive berk has either just tipped off a terrorist cell on the verge of an atrocity that British intelligence are on their case or he’s talking up some bollocks up for its fear-mongering propaganda value.

Which is it?

As Sid says, the trailer for W is ace even if the movie itself doesn’t apparently quite live up to it.

Boy, are we going to bore our grandchildren with tales about that jackass.

Anyway, there’s a jolly good reason why this process of bailing out the hopeless nitwits who’ve thrown our pensions down the shitter can be safely called Socialism. It’s so that when we’re suffering in a couple of years’ time and things have really gone tits-up, people can shake their heads and say: “Well, of course things are bad - that’s socialism for you. If only we could let the banks and financial institutions do every single tiny thing they wanted without any restriction or regulation in the slightest, then everything would be all right again. Sure, it was necessary at the time in order to prop things up and restore confidence, but this just goes to show that socialism is a failed ideology that can’t work at any stage and will only make people miserable.”

Read the rest

As a new banking shareholder Owen Barder lays it on the line with a few excellent instructions for the banks’ managers. All the instructions are perfectly sane, reasonable and humane. Therefore, of course, they don’t have a hope in hell of being implemented.

If you want to see New Labour in all its glory, not to mention the decline of the Labour movement, just take a look at this photograph.

On the right you have Baroness Jay, someone who, of course, owes nothing to her standing in public life to the fact that she is the daughter of former prime minister, James Callaghan. So steeped in Labour’s traditions is she, her children were privately educated despite her protestations that she is against private education. She never stood for election.

On the left you have Lord Falconer, someone who, of course, owes nothing to his public standing to the fact that he is the former flatmate of former prime minister Tony Blair. So steeped in Labour’s traditions is he, Falconer had to be given a seat in the Lords as he was refused a parliamentary candidacy because he insisted his children be privately educated. He never stood for election.

In the centre, of course, is Baron Mandelson, architect of New Labour, twice disgraced, and demonstrable liar. A less than brave figure, whispered briefings to journalists have been his way of conducting government and personal relations. He once tried to punch fellow New Labour liar Alastair Campbell over what Tony Blair should wear when meeting party activists. There are volumes filled with tales of this man’s arrogance, vanity and malevolence. As newly-appointed Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, he didn’t stand for election.

Is it the times we live in that give rise to this nepotism, back-scratching and blind-eyes turned? As Matthew Carr says in The First Post:

We may well wonder at the motives of Gordon Brown for bringing one of his former political enemies back into the government. But as we shake our heads at the cynicism and moral blankness of the “prince of darkness” we might pause to consider that these vices are not just his: ­ they are part and parcel of the system that allows such men to flourish.

We voted for it as a country and we have an astronomical tolerance for it now it’s finally biting us rather than the victims of neo-Thatcherism in far-flung pan-African ghettoes. Our servility, this bovine acceptance and unquestioning acceptance of our lot, is fast becoming part of our genetic make-up. It really is too late to complain now.