Blogthings - How Scary Are You?

You Are Scary

You even scare scary people sometimes!

How Scary Are You?

Tim Hames Times Online Opinion

Tim Hames in The Times on New Labours 'Respect' agenda an drinking on trains:

"It also constitutes the worst aspects of the Blair approach to governing. The Respect agenda is almost comically imperious in its ambitions, shockingly vague about the details of implementation and betrays a disturbing absence of a clear sense of personal prime ministerial priorities. It starts with the valid identification of a social ill or imperfection, moves swiftly to the assumption that for every question there must be an answer minted in Whitehall and ends with the conclusion that what is required is a “specialist” bureaucracy or “unit” with its “dedicated tsar” and an “autonomous” budget and a more “can-do” attitude toward its business. Binge thinking thus becomes public policy. In the desire to be seen “doing something”, schemes are drawn up that are less back of an envelope than back of a postage stamp."

More EU Stupidity

More EU stupidity this time fish. In order to help with keeping the food we eat safe the decided the solution was more beaurocracy, this being the EU that was obviously going to be the solution, leading to vast supply chains and delays in the shipment so that the food spoils ans isn't safe to eat.

The reason why New Labour is still in power

Survey shows 11m people have taken drugs, more than the number that Voted New Labour in the last election. At least this explains why New Labour are still in power and so able to push their fascist agenda, but it must have been a mighty bad batch to be powerful enough to create that kind of halucination that New Labour offers anything worth voting for.

New Labour wants to steal you home

Not satisfied with stealling your property if you are not using it in the way that New Labour wants, they also want to be able to steal it if you break an ASBO. That is they want to be able to steal proprty based on an order given based on idle gossip for nonsesical reasons without a proper trial in court

The 40 separate proposals include moves to allow local councils to seize the privately owned homes of people convicted of serious anti-social behaviour offences.

and confirms it with an article from the times

The Times:

Confiscating the homes of people who breach anti-social behaviour orders (Asbos)

Yup, they really are suggesting this.

The report confirms plans to let local councils confiscate the homes of persistent offenders who breach their Asbos, and to send problem families to “sin bins” for rehabilitation.

Confiscation of property and off to a re-education camp with you.

Obsession

A timeline of terrorism commintted by members of the Religion of Peace from the 1960's.

Harper pulls photo exhibit Muslim protest

Once again a work of art has been censored because of religious nutters, no need to guess which religion. Islam of course.

ID Cards

Good news on the ID Cards front according to The Register

According to a report in the Independent on Sunday, Government CIO Ian Watmore has told ministers that the complexity and scale of the plan means that it may have to be phased in, while William Heath of Kable cites senior Whitehall sources as being on the brink of blocking the project.

From Independent Online Edition >The Independent's article:

Mr Watmore added: "We are going to set the direction for this thing now in the Act and implement it with the technologies we have on the day. If they don't work, we won't go forward. Biometrics is something which has not been used on the scale of a national implementation."

The Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, is responsible for the scheme. Mr Watmore urged ministers to be cautious over new IT projects after a series of disasters which have hit the Passport Agency and the Child Support Agency.

Minister's now believe, "partly because of the problems in the past, that they should not put projects live until they are ready. They would rather delay."

And since the technology to do what the government says ID Cards are for will never be there they should never actually be implemented. Unfortunantly the technology for what the government really wants ID cards for, social control, really is available so they might go ahead.

The religion of peace

The religion of peace continues it's terrorist attacks across the globe. Beheading schoolgirls in indonesia, bombing Delhi, and rioting to the point of 'civil war' in France.

another self test thingy

Test Results: "

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

"

securing Operating Systems

The NSA (No Such Agency) has released guides for securing various operating systems so that private suppliers to the US Government are less likely to supply completely unsecure systems. Or maybe they are bluffing, and want you to follow there advise which will open up subtle holes for them to exploit. Or maybe it is a double bluff, and they know people will think this and so deliberately not follow there advise leaving there systems in the a less secure default state than it could be making there cracking duties easier. Or maybe it is a triple bluff ... head explodes.

Councils could seize empty homes

The Labour Party, being socialist, had a tendency towards thinking "all property is theft", New labour simply prefers the theft of all property.

Australia's New Anti-Terrorism Legislation

Australia's New Anti-Terrorism Legislation follows where Blair leads introducing:

* 14-day secret detention without arrest by security services
* Shoot-to-kill "on suspicion" powers for police
* Imprisonment and fines for revealing an individual has been the subject of an investigation

The police may not have shoot-to-kill powers officially, but that doesn't stop them doing it, but the other two are already part of British law introduced by New Labour. The Australian laws also include a return of seditious libel, which I believe is not currently part of British Law. But I wonder for how long.

Andrew Sullivan, gay marriage

The opponents to gay marriage have reached to bottom of the barrel ... and started digging.

Johann Hari on faith schools

Johann Hari is talking about Faith School and telling it as it is. They are not a good idea. But New Labour likes them as it allows them to reinstate selection which gives better exam results.

The right-wing think tank Civitas - expected to back faith schools with table-thumping vigour - decided to study the figures, and found something surprising. Faith schools get better results for one simple reason: they use selection to cream off middle-class children - all kids bright and beautiful - and to weed out difficult, poor or unmotivated students who would require more work.

New Labour want statistics that look good, and don't care about the social segregation (and therefore more riots and death) that they course to get them. But things are not all good with these schools

Civitas found that actually - once you factor in the fact they take brighter kids with far fewer problems - it turns out faith schools underperform compared to other schools.

Even with being able to select faith schools are not as good as the schools that they are trying to emulate since they set aside hours each week preaching superstitious drivel when they could be teaching something useful.

The solution is simple and has been known for years. Grammar Schools. Teach kids up to their full potential by selecting for that potential alone. There will naturally be a strong mix of backgrounds from all groups leading to greater understanding (and so less riots) as well as better education and greater social mobility.

ID Cards

The longrider has a really nice post attaching the arguments for ID Cards

Charles Clarke poses with an inane grin brandishing an Identity Card while telling us that this is not Big Brother, it is the means of controlling Big Brother, a means of controlling and asserting our identity. What tosh! I am perfectly capable of asserting my identity should I so wish. The reality is that for much of the time, I simply don’t need to. How frequently do we need to prove who we are? Most of the people with whom we do business couldn’t care less who we are; simply that we have the wherewithal to pay them. What we have here is a self-fulfilling need. A need created by government for a problem that does not exist.

He goes on

Presuming that scenario – that technology works, the database is accurate and everybody involved is competent and incorruptible, the nature of the database and the audit trail makes profiling a doddle in a manner previously not possible. In the event of it not working as it should, profiling will still go on; it’s just that the results will be flawed. For the victim this could have devastating consequences.

Now when you consider ChoicePoint and Acxiom, two of the U.S.'s largest data brokers had databases had inaccuracies in over 65% of their entries, or the US terrorist watch list has lead to the detention of babies and even stops US Senators it seems likely that the NIR will be inaccurate, probably so inaccurate as to affect hundreds of thousands of people. So creating problems that where never there before, and would never had been there was it not for the existence of ID Cards. He concludes with some thoughts on the need for ID Cards

A few months back I read a comment written by a Swede. He claimed that their system was an excellent one and that it made access to services so much simpler, they couldn’t possibly manage without their ID cards. Of course not. If the government makes living without one all but impossible, naturally they will make life easier. They are a self-fulfilling need. In the real world, we simply do not need them.

Neil Harding is still trying to justify ID Cards, using the Identity Theft argument and this corker

But the general refutation is that the govt will obviously only support a scheme that works. The govt would be utterly stupid to foist an over budget, technically flawed system that is open to abuse, on the public just before an election in 2009. It just won't happen.

So everything that the government does works, especially in the field of IT. Then there is Identity Theft, an argument Andrew destroys in the comments

Neil: Nice try, but even if the scheme makes savings of 65mn a year by totally obliterating identity fraud (which it won't), and assuming that the government's estimate for the start-up costs of 6bn are correct (which they aren't), it would take over 900 years to recover the costs of the scheme.

Blair gives away power to the EU

There seems to be something in the air about the Dear Leader attempting to give away yet more large tranches of power to the beast in brussels. The Englishman at An Englishmans Castle has a peice on it by the Telegraph and EU Serf comments on similar sounding proposals from an article in the Times. But nothing from EU Referendum so it could be that this is actually old news that the dead tree media has only just picked up on, or that they have completely missed the point (which is normally something even worse).

Yay for unelected cronies ...

Norman Geras has this on the Lords amendment to the Religious Hatred Bill, originally from the Guardian

A new clash between the House of Lords and the Commons looks increasingly likely after peers voted overwhelmingly last night to amend the planned law against religious hatred to introduce safeguards protecting freedom of speech.
...
The amendment ... tightens up the definition of language needed to bring a prosecution. This is now restricted to "threatening" rather than "insulting and abusive" language.

Microsoft continues it's bad old ways

Convicted of abusing it's monopoly before to 'cut off the air supply' of Netscape Navigator Microsoft has been trying to break the terms of it's, very microsoft friendly, settlement.

The disputed plan, part of a marketing campaign known as "easy start," would have affected portable music devices that compete with Apple Computer Inc.'s popular iPod. It would have precluded makers of those devices from distributing to consumers music software other than Microsoft's own Windows Media Player, in exchange for Microsoft-supplied CDs.

Burn Blair

Backing Blair is encouraging people to burn Tony Blair in effigy. Sounds good to me, I wouldn't mind burning Tony Blair in person.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR BUILDING A BLAIR GUY:

The head is the trickiest bit, but often it can be simple as laying a bit of papier mache over a balloon and then sticking a picture of Blair's face on the front. If you want to get more advanced and go for something approaching sculpture, then please do remember to include the wingnut-like ears, that insincere smile and those goofed-out eyes (otherwise the local authorities won't be able to recognise it before they arrest you under the 2005 Respect For Your Betters Act).

traffic wardens ticket quota

Long suspected but never proved, Traffic wardens have a minimum quota of tickets they have to give according to the Torquay Herald

They [traffic wardens] have also been sent leaflets from the company which manages the attendants, NCP, offering reward points to wardens who deliver "increased sales" which can be exchanged for goods in Argos stores. In an exclusive interview, a warden claimed there are:

TARGETS of at least one ticket per hour.

REPRIMANDS for going through a shift without handing out enough tickets.

MOBILE patrols of traffic wardens in unmarked cars scouring the streets of Torquay, Paignton and Brixham until 10pm.

In a direct quote their whistle blower says

"The majority of us don't like it but you get told off if you don't hand out enough tickets."

Terror Bill clears first hurdle unfortunately

The conservatives are idiots, they could have maimed Tony's terror bill but decided to back it!

Most Conservatives, led by home affairs spokesman David Davis, backed the bill, giving it a majority of 378.

They should kill it! Kill it now! Kill it before it escapes! With this and not voting against ID Cards if David Davis becomes leader of the Conservatives it will take a lot to make me vote for them. Ken Clarke voted against, and I disagree with him on many things but in this he was completely correct. As did Clare Short. There is hope even for Mr Davis as

Mr Davis told MPs longer detention was "a fundamental sticking point".

Despite talking to police and security services, he had "yet to hear a convincing argument for this measure".

And good on the Liberal Democrats

Lib Dem home affairs spokesman Mark Oaten replied: "Real opposition and principled opposition is about making a stand on this key issue of holding suspects without charge."

Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy has said there is no "consensus", even within the government, over some of the bill's "wrong" measures.

Jerusalem's gay parade is go

despite objections from the religious nutters, taking time out from killin each other to threaten a group that has never done harm to them, Jerusalem's gay parade is go. I wonder if any other country in that area will be having one? Perhaps not.

FBI Abuses of the USA Patriot Act

Bruce Schneier notes that the FBI has been abusing the powers given to it under the USA Patriot Act:

"This week marks the four-year anniversary of the enactment of the Patriot Act. Does anyone feel safer because of it?"

And will anyone feel safer because of the Tyrant Blair's anti-terrorist measures? Or will they be abused to terrorise the general public? I wonder ...

grovelling to the Islamists

Instapundit has advice for religions that do not get all of their pettiest demands answered

Start blowing things up and beheading people. This will gain you enormous solicitude from the powers-that-be

This is following and article about even more stupid and excessive Muslim sensibilities this time banning books (soon I guess to be burning books) containing pig characters. Guess that that would include Animal Farm?

normblog: The Iraqi constitution passes

Not very suprising, but still a very good thing.

attempting escape: A New Court, F*ck No

Attempting Escape has picked up a nice little nugget burried in a BBC article that Charles Clarke wants to radically change the court system, that is presumable for the people lucky enough to actually get a trail, converting over to the continental system of an investigating judge.

Still stumbling head-first into the database state

After Devil's Kitchen's fisking of Neil Harding over ID Cards (again and again) there are some more blogs pointing out to him just how wrong he is over ID Cards. Such as a fellow Labour party member at Talk Politics who also rips apart Mr Harding's arguements, particually the ones about costs and the likelyhood of this whole thing actually doing anything useful with a list of all the other recent IT projects and their sucsess:

The Inland Revenue tax credits system which locked up for 15 minutes at a time and led to staff walking out. After ten months, 220,000 cases were unresolved and 400,000 people got their money late.
The NIRS2 national insurance system that came in years late and massively over budget - costing £85 million in compensation and £68 million to put right.
The electronic personnel management system in the Inland Revenue that can only be used by managers on a Monday to ensure that demand doesn't cause the system to fall over.
The on-line PAYE system that hasn't been sufficiently well-tested.
Five million tax records lost by the Inland Revenue.
Problems with the Swanwick air traffic control system.
The Security Service's new SCOPE computer, which is running three years late and 50% over budget for an underpowered system.
The HR system for the Northern Ireland Office which cost £3.3 million and didn't work after nine years
A lack of performance monitoring on NHS IT, criticised as 'an appalling waste of money' by a parliamentary committee.
The BOWMAN military radio project, which came into limited use over a decade late at a cost of almost £2 billion.
The new Child Support Agency system which went massively over-budget and over-schedule
The complete cock-up of the payment card system that swallowed £1 billion before it was scrapped
The immigration document handling project that was scrapped after £77 million and a delay of years
The CRAMS system for the probation service that went 70% over budget

[List above courtesy of the excellent PoliticalHack]

Then there is Chris Lightfoot who destroys Mr Harding's claim that the ID Card database will only contain the same data as the Passport database (for his arguement Mr Harding conveniently forgets that inclusion of Biometrics into the passport database comes as part of the ID scheme, and that it cannot be designed so that it does not contain at least one extra field. The number that matches between the NIR and the card). When we where told this it was a leak of what Charles Clarke was going to do, but didn't.

In fact, schedule 1 of the Bill, which defines the information which may be held on the National Identity Register, is unaltered from the Bill at second reading, and still contains a list of fifty-odd items of personal information and retains the intrusive `audit trail'. I pointed this out in a letter to the Independent today:

Sir: Ben Russell and Nigel Morris write (18 October) that the Home Secretary ``will offer a guarantee that the planned national identity database will hold no more personal details than contained on a passport''. Charles Clarke has made no such guarantee, and the Home Office has always intended that the National Identity Register would hold much more, and much more intrusive, information than does a passport.

Specifically, under Schedule 1 of the Bill, the register will store, ``particulars of every occasion on which information contained in the individual's entry has been provided to a person''. That ``audit trail'' will record the details of every occasion on which a person presents their card to be checked; according to the Home Office, that will be whenever they consult a doctor, or visit a hospital or a public library or even go to the shops. So the register will build up a detailed picture of every card-holder's life -- vastly more than the simple personal details shown on even the planned biometric passports. And under clause 22 of the Bill, this highly confidential information can be disclosed by the Government to anyone at any time for any purpose connected with a public service.

Chris Lightfoot
Cambridge

the joke of the asylum system

The asylum system is beyond a joke. It seems that the best qualification for getting it is to be attempting to destroy British society, but if you are genuinely fleeing persecution then they send you back. Gay men like Kumran Shariatmadari and Isaac Osuji highlighted by Johann Hari, only two of so many many, face being sent back to countries where they face as the very least torture and probably death. Yet Bakri Mohamid was free to stay for 25 years and suck up as much in benefits as he could, even though he faced no threat at all in his home country and explicity proclaimed that he wants to destroy the freedoms of the British way of life and replace it with Sharia tryanny.

We had a duty to help people fleeing persecution, but none to harbour forgeiners that would seek to destroy us. New Labour seems to think the reverse.

Neil Harding missunderstands liberty

The Devil's Kitchen: has an extract from the twat on his attempts to claim that he is infact liberal.

"Proportional Representation for Westminster.
Incentive Voting.
A Citizen's income.
Legalisation of all drugs.
Congestion Charging.
Complete Ban on workplace smoking.
Ban on alcohol advertising.
Amnesty for all illegal workers in UK.
Automatic place at Oxbridge for brightest pupil at each secondary school.
Triple council tax for second home owners.
Re-emphasis on restorative penalties not prison sentences.
Widen council tax bands to make it less regressive.
Free local bus travel for local council tax payers."

Liberalism is about liberty, that is freedom. It is about removing blocks on people doing what they like and choosing the best cause of action for themselves. So lets look at this list to see how it fairs.

Proportional Representation for Westminster.
null, no reduction in liberty there nor any real increase

Incentive Voting.
bad, absention is as valid a choice as any other, this is effectively penalising abstention and so reducing choice (slightly).

A Citizen's income.
Good for liberty

Legalisation of all drugs.
Good for liberty

Congestion Charging.
Bad, you are reducing freedom of movement.

Complete Ban on workplace smoking.
Bad, you are reducing the choice to smoke

Ban on alcohol advertising.
Bad, censorship

Amnesty for all illegal workers in UK.
Good, giving poeple more freedom to travel and work

Automatic place at Oxbridge for brightest pupil at each secondary school.
Bad, reducing Oxbridge's (both are independent institutions) liberty to choose the people that best serve it's needs

Triple council tax for second home owners.
Bad, you are reducing peoples liberty to live where they like when they like and own what they like

Re-emphasis on restorative penalties not prison sentences.
good, prison is by it's very nature a loss of liberty. So so long as the restorative penalties work this is a gain in liberty.

Widen council tax bands to make it less regressive.
null, all you are doing is shifting around taxes with no effect on liberty other than the general loss of liberty over your money that all tax brings.

Free local bus travel for local council tax payers.
bad, when combined with congestion charging. You are forcing people out of the most useful transport network into a worse one rather than letting them choose the one that best serves their needs.

bad 7, good 4, null 2 so not a very liberal list. Unless you decide to twist Liberalism to mean Socialism, since this is a very Socialist list.

Who Controls The Past...

It isn't just New Labour that wants to rewrite the past the French are at it as well trying to airbrush out Algeria from their history.

Are police & secuirty staff exceeding their authority in the name of terrorism?

Asks willie2cameras on the ePhotoZine message board. Yes, absolutely is the obvious reply after reading his story.

Having been a photographer for around 30 years, I am getting concerned that police and the £5 per hour security 'jobsworths' are exceeding or misusing their authority under the catch all of terrorism.

Just what on earth is happening?

The restrictions and hassle being imposed for no valid reason I can see, are greater than at the height of the IRA terror attacks.

In the past few weeks, I have been told that photography at railway stations "is banned".

It isn't - photographers are still welcome. I've been threatened with the transport police - I did wait once for 30 mins after I insisted they were called but they never came - and once asked to hand over my memory card! No one has that right.

There was a heated conversation with a security man after I took pictures from a public road of a new building under construction. I was told I "needed permission as the building was copyright".

...

There is a danger that in 20-30 years time there will be no photographs of street scenes, public buildings, everyday life because common sense is not being applied. Someone told me this week a photographer had been apprehended under the Prevention of Terrorism act for taking a picture of a shop in a High Street, and Labour MP Austin Mitchell had aggrevation at the party conference.

I have recently visited Holland, Germany, Ireland, Hungary and Switzerland and had no problems at all.

So why Britain? Are those in authority paranoid? Our rights and freedoms are being eroded and it seems no one is fighting it.

In Holland, Germany, Ireland, Hungary and Switzerland New Labour is not in power. A little fascism makes a big difference.

Between Jam and Jelly: Regulation as the Default State of Affairs

Uriah Kriegel has an article on Tech Central Station on the decent of the EU ino regulation as the Default State of Affairs

With the world's fourth biggest proportion of the population making less than $2 a day, and $430 GNI per capita, Mauritania is one of the world's poorest countries. Featuring mostly camels and sand dunes, it has almost no non-oil natural resources. Yet meager resources inspire greater entrepreneurial ingenuity, and a few years ago a German company figured out a method by which to produce cheese from camel milk. A miracle for the unfortunate people of Mauritania? Not quite. The European Commission did not approve the new product. The reason: there were no regulations in place for camel-based products.

Idiots, pure and total idiots. I do not need the EU to say if I can or cannot do something. If it does not violate the laws of physics then obviously I can do it, with enough effort. Somethings society has decided are not good for society as a whole and as I want ot be part of society I abide by these taboo, but I do not need and never have needed some beaurocrat telling me what I can do.

BrightonRegencyLabour ... twat

There is apparently a blogger that supports ID Cards BrightonRegencyLabour. He is an idot, apparently:

"Because the Tories have popularised being anti-ID card from a right wing perspective, it has been very easy for the liberal bloggers to find voice and support for liberty issues that otherwise would be killed off by the right wing media. This combination in right/left motivation coupled with support from the centrist Lib Dems has led to an unstoppable orthodoxy amongst political bloggers. It also fits nicely with popular perception of the govt as being illiberal."

New Labour is percieved as being illiberal because New Labour is illiberal, it is the most illiberal government that this country has had to endure for decades. Fascist even.

They got rid of the right to trial (and want to go further with summary justice delivered on the streets), and should you get a trial they got rid of the presumption of innocence. New Labour let your accusors repeat gossip as if it where evidence. New Labour have been constantly snipping against jurry trial and judical independence. New Labour ministers have lied to Parliment, repeatedly. Then when one of their lies got them into a war with no public support they banned a minority pastime (banning being their instinctive reaction to just about everything) to scrape together enough political capital to get a debate on it dropped. When members of the public refused to accept their lies and evation they banned all protest in parliment square, over the protest of one man (still there, great man). When this issue still refused to die (unlike british soldiers who are dieing quite regularly) and a Nazi refugee had the temidity to heckle a New Labour minister over it he was arrested as a terrorist, along with 600 others. However he should probably be greatful that New Labour where not in power when he was fleeing Nazi tryany, since New Labour would probably have wanted to deport him back. Like the black africans they deport back to Sudan or Zimbabwe (now thankfully stopped), or the gay men they deport back to Iran so they can produce a set of statistics that look good on TV.

Also

There will be no compulsion to carry the ID card.

Of course it will be compulory, they are only starting it off as voluntary because it would cause to much of a revolt otherwise. New Labours own plans call for it to be compulsory by 2008 2013.

The police will have no new powers to ask you to prove your identity.

No they will just use the ones they have already got, but since they where drawn up in the days before ID Cards there application will radically alter. The police already have the power to arrest somebody if they do not give an identity to their satisfaction, without an ID Card this does not mean much but with it it will morph into hte power to arrest anyone that does not produce their papers on demand.

it is all very well the government giving all these guarantees now, but how do we stop future govts adding all these extra details to the cards gradually and without our consent.

Which they will do, they have lied to parliment and the public repeatedly. They have already lied over this one:

The govt have stated that the cards and NIR will carry only the information your passport does. It would need primary legislation through parliament to add to this.

Wrong, the ID Card database contains biometrics. These are not required for current passports. Even as the passports get upgraded the only required passport is a digital copy of the photo already there, not finger prints, iris scans, and face patterns. And where is this extra data stored, yes in the NIR. So it does contain more data than is currently held for passports. Another New Labour lie, but they are now so common as to stop even being noted.

[update]

And lets not forget that New Labour also decided that torture is right so long as they don't directly get their hands dirty. Blood is obviously a bitch to get out of an expensive suit. Or the Civil Contingencies Act that New Labour passed to allow it to do, well, just about anything in case of emergency, rather like the emergency clause in the Soviet constitution, or Hitler's Enabling Act. Emergency being defined as pretty well whatever Tony says it is. And if they cannot get you the first time with their extraordinarily broad anti-terrorism laws they can always just keep on repeating the trial until the 'correct' answer is extracted.

Transparency International

Transparency International has released it's Corruption Perceptions Index 2005 including this handy map,world corruption map (pdf), of the places perceived to be the most and least corrupt. It is not really a suprise that there seems a link between lack of corruption and economic performance, also most of the least corrupt places all seem to be either Anglosphere or Nordic. With not one Islamic country.

When Harriet met Hizb ... Islamofacism ridicules itself

With New Labours stupid the bill on Religious Hatred being pushed through parliment as a sop to the Islamofacists, you know the people rioting in Birmingham, it seems particually ironic that the Islamofascist party His Butt Tahrir crawls to Harriet Harman when they need help. A woman parlimentarian in a secular democratic parliment, as Nick Cohen of the Observer puts it

Yet here were totalitarians and misogynists going to a woman democratic politician and begging her to persuade Tony Blair not to take authoritarian measures against their authoritarian sect. The scene could have been bettered only if Harman had been a Jewish lesbian.

Their parting shot being

As they were leaving, she said, 'you're British citizens. Shouldn't you try to play a part in British society?'

'We're not a part of British society,' they told her. 'We stay here like guests in a hotel.'

If only. Guests in a hotel do not get to write the rules of a hotel. Guests in a hotel pay for their stay. And if guests in a hotel don't like the rules that are set out for that hotel they leave. So perhaps His Butt Tahrir should act a bit more like guests in a hotel.

The political realignment

The great political realignment carries on, this example of it reported through Harry's Place about the coming together of left and right authoritarians under the guise of pleading for poor little fascist Tariq Aziz.

The organ-grinder is a monkey

reptile brains explain nutty laws, no this has nothing to do with David Ike rather a set of American scientists (yes there are some left) are talking about the way people respond under preasure and which parts of the brain are used for making judgments.

"Moderate levels of negative emotions warn the higher brain that its slower, more reasoned powers will be required. Intensifying fear or anger will soon take over though, kicking in the faster responding primitive brain, as the paper's co-author Professor George Lowenstein explains: 'One may realize the what the best course of action is but find one's self doing the opposite.'"

Monk, teenagers killed in Thai Muslim south

I wonder how Al Guardian is going to spin this so that is all the falt of bushitler and the Iraq war.

Muslim militants killed a Buddhist monk and two teenage boys and set fire to a temple in Thailand's restive south, police said on Sunday, in separatist violence that has claimed more than 900 lives.

There is a minority of Muslims that have turned to Islamofascism and to war against the rest of the world in order to attain their goal of the entire world 'submitting' under the yoke of their particular brand of fundimentalist Islam. Iraq may or may not have been a mistake (I'm in two minds at the moment). But if it was it was not because we the West got rid of a despotic tyrant and gave the Iraqi people democracy, but because it is a distraction from the real problem of combatting Islamofascism.

NSW government demands action over Customs systems

NSW government demands action over Customs systems, since they have collapsed. Another big new computer system, another big faliure:

"Glitches in a new customs computer system have caused a massive container backlog at NSW's largest port and threaten to bring it to a standstill, the state government says."

Trafalgar Day

Seeing as how this is Trafalgar Day The Monarchist is living blogging the event, not any celebrations of Trafalgar Day, but the battle itself. And on this day when the Britsh celebrate a great victory over the continental powers it seems approperate to link to a story on the EU Referendum Blog about the slow grinding halt of another grandeos French attempt to gain control over Europe in hte primary interests of France. Yes the EU might be running out of steam.

The Devil's Kitchen: The nature of the beast

The Devil's Kitchen: The nature of the beast, the beast being New Labour. The nature fascist.

Another database bites the dust

This time the database that was supposed to have been set up as one of the recomendations of Lord Laming followed the death of eight-year-old Victoria, who was murdered by her great-aunt and the aunt's boyfriend. But now even the man that wanted it set up in the first place is having doughts

Lord Laming has now joined the ranks of doubters as he suggested the recommendation, made two years ago, was unworkable and likely to breach data protection rules, according to an interview published today on social care and health professionals' information website, Care and Health.

...

"A national, all-singing, all-dancing, complicated database, accessible to everybody is not only expensive but I doubt it will improve case outcomes. It also breaches reasonable safeguards of data protection," Lord Laming said.

And New Labour are planning an even bigger, more complicated database to store the details of everybody for their ID Cards. Do they never learn?

Labour survives ID card rebellion

ID Cards have passed from the commons to the Lords. New Labours majority was reduced to it's lowest level since the election, but even the action of these Labour MP's that reject the Tyrant Blair's megalomania where not enough to stop him.

Labour's Bob Marshall-Andrews said the bill was "the most illiberal piece of legislation we have been asked to pass in this House for half a century".

Edward Garnier, for the Tories, said: "It is wholly unhealthy for us as a Parliament to give this government unseen powers over the citizen and over the way in which he conducts his or her life."

Now it is up to the, undemocratic, Lords to try and safeguard our liberty.

ID cards will lead to 'massive fraud'

thanks to An Englishman's Castle this little nugget comes to light. Jerry Fishenden, the national technology officer for Microsoft says that ID cards will lead to 'massive fraud', which kind of kills off the governments last excuse for introducing ID Cards. The claim that it will help prevent ID theift does not really stack up when an independent expert starts saying that

Mr Fishenden says that, as no computer system is ever 100 per cent secure, "putting a comprehensive set of personal data in one place produces a honeypot effect - a highly attractive and richly rewarding target for criminals".

and

But the technology expert warns that holding these details in one place "is something that no technologist would ever recommend" and could leave individuals helpless if their details were compromised.

"Unlike other forms of information, such as credit card details, if core biometric details such as your fingerprints are compromised, it is not going to be possible to provide you with new ones," Mr Fishenden says. Using the same "identifiers" every time the ID card is presented is a "highly risky technical design" and could inadvertently broadcast personal information to fraudsters or private companies. Having to produce this much information for every service is "unnecessary" as systems could be designed to ensure that only the relevant data is revealed each time.

"Would you be happy if online auction sites, casinos or car rental company employees are given the same identity information that provides you with access to your medical records?" Mr Fishenden writes.

However it looks like New Labour is still going to vote it through.

ID cards scheme dubbed 'a farce'

The BBC has reported that people with brown eyes cannot be identified by the biometric system to be used in New Labour's ID Cards. The expected New Labour solution, lock up all brown eyed people indefinantly without trial?

Speed Camera's - Public Notice.

A very interesting report on what actually happens with all the speed cameras, even more disturbing than I had thought. Everybody that goes over the limit by even a tiny amount is recorded, the system then decides who to fine based on past performance. So there is a vast database containing information on just about everybody, and all of there movements. Very disturbing.

Speed cameras kill

Thanks to alec muffett this little gem has been brought to my attention statistically showing that speed cameras increase risks on the roads, the report that it is based on as been buried by the government so you have to pay to see it (having already paid for it's creation through taxes).

* Where fixed speed cameras were installed at road works the risk of personal injury crashes was increased by 55%.

* Where fixed speed cameras were installed on open motorways the risk of injury crashes was increased by 31%.

* Average speed cameras also increased the risk of crashes by 4.5% at roadworks and 6.7% elsewhere.

But on the other hand

* Conventional Police patrols reduced the risk of crashes by 27% at road works
and 10% elsewhere.

a fact that they tried to use to cover up the fact that cameras make driving dangerous.

Erroneous Speed Camera Tickets

If you think that UK speed cameras are stupid the ones in south africa are worse according to The English Guy, they are giving out tickets for people going to slowly!

Full Speed Ahead On Britain's Roads

Speeding is an un-crime, since one in eight motorists break the speed limit every time they get behind the wheel. The law should reflect the taboo of society, but in many cases it does not. This used to be the role of juries to force it back into line, but there role has been steadily diminished (especially on these lesser crimes) so the written law becomes more and more out of sync with society.
* 21% of drivers believe speed limits are too low;
* 9% do not know the national speed limit;
* 17% find it too hard to keep to the limit;
* 3% say that they see speed limits as a target to reach;
* 24% think speed limits should be lower around schools;
* Around 60% reckon speeding is more acceptable than drink or drug driving.

UN takes the piss out of itself

Robert Mugabe speaking at ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation compared Bush and Blair to Hilter. Where to begin, this story has everything.

There is the UN, a toothless talking shop taking the piss out of itself by inviting the man that transformed Zimbabwe from a bread basket into a place of mass stavation to talk about hunger. I guess he does know something about it having caused so much.

There is the EU, and it's useless travel ban supposed to hurt Mugabe, yet he is still able to come over whenever he wants thanks to another transnational organisation.

There is the 'blame everything on the west' attitude. Mugabe claiming that all problems everywhere (just about) where from US imperialism, forgetting that it was his policies that have left Zimbabwe staving and destitute. The UN audience didn't care about little things like that and lapped it up and applauded his fiery anti-Western speech several times.

There is calling western governments terrorists, and comparing Blair and Bush (or Bushilter) to Hitler. Now I am not Blair's best friend, but this coming from a racist despot like Mugabe? Irony overload.

A story with everything.

Things you can buy for thirty quid

Things you can buy for thirty quid, or £150 which is the more realistic projection for what the ID Cards are going to cost. And where is this shortfall going to come from? Tax payers of course, but to reduce the extra taxs to pay for this thing they are going to cut spending in other areas of the home office one the little things that people won't miss, like policemen and doctors.

Tim Worstall on ID Card Idiocy.

Tim is reporting a peice in The Guardian that Charlie the Safety Elephant is now claiming that the ID Card database will only contain the same amount as the current passort database. The whole case for ID Cards has been based on lies but this one is good even by New Labour standards. If we take him at his word the system will be totally safe as it is based on 13 biometrics (actually 3) however since the database will only contain the data that is currently held in the passport database which does not have these 13 (actually 3) biometrics where are they stored so that they can be verified. Perhaps the pink fairies inscribe them on scrolls of vellum to be magically transported to whereever a verification needs to take place before disappearing in a poof of smoke. Or Mr Clarke could be speaking out of his arse.

andromeda

some cool pics of Andromeda at different wavelengths

Harry's Place: Comment on Religious Troublemakers

Harry's Place: Comment on Religious Troublemakers:

"Doing just what David Boothroyd suggested, I get the following (perps per thousand general population):

Christian 1.009
Buddhist 6.238
Hindu 0.6066
Jewish 0.6898
Muslim 3.856
Sikh 1.458
Other 1.157
No Religion 1.657"

The average seems to be about 1 per thousand, that is the level of the christian group who are also the majority group with a fairly low standard deviation that is spread equally amougst all of the religions. Until you get to Buddhism, which stands out like a sore thumb as way more likely to have followers in prison per head of population than anyone else. Since Buddhists only have 0.3% of the population their error bar is going to be higher but still that is very high. Possibly convertion in prison (Islam is well known to get many converts in prison which accounts for it's relavily high numbers). I guess that being locked in a cell all day would be good for meditation.