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.

Schneier on Security: ID Cards and Identity Theft

Schneier on Security on Real ID and Identity Theft, completely revlvant to our own ID Cards. Especially since ID Theft seems to be the only thing they have left to try and justify this freedom destroying waste of money, but as Mr Schneier says

Why does Reuters think that a better ID card will protect against identity theft? The problem with identity theft isn't that ID cards are forgeable, it's that financial institutions don't check them before authorizing transactions.

and hence ID cards will make no difference what so ever.

New Labour state.

The joys of the New Labour state, anti-social behaviour orders for people trying to help their community for free and anti-terror laws used against pedestrians walking on cycle paths. Nice to see such obviously just and reasoned uses of the law, just the thing to make me want the police to have to power to dispensesummary justice. Somebody has got to kill Blair and his cronies as soon as possible.

The Times Online guest contributors Opinion

The Times on ID Cards which is perhaps not the best name for them:

"ID cards would be better named 'surveillance cards', because they provide central authority with a means for monitoring all your activities, and give it permanent access to all your personal details."

Since you already know your own identity. but also

"To the permanent loss of privacy and universal surveillance is added an opposite problem. Technical experts point out that one in six people will not be able to get ID cards because their biometric data (iris patterns, fingerprints, facial patterns) may not be recordable on the card’s implanted computer chip. They will therefore find it hard to access the services such as healthcare and pensions that ID cards are intended to give “entitlement” to."

So an underclass of un-people without the proper papers to be presented whenever they are demanded by your friendly automatic wielding secret policeman, just before he puts 11 bullets into their head.

Minister's shock claim: ID scheme to check 13 biometrics

a quick debunking of the ID scheme to check 13 biometricsr by The Register

Eight years on and still no gun register

A story from the Scotsman that is in a way this is a good thing. Eight years after a database of all registered guns was promised it has still not materialised, so they cannot build a database to hold a dataset of known comprehensive good data from law abiding folk, so how much harder will the proposed ID Card database be and so how much less likely to be completed. At the time of the Dunblaine massacre, which is what triggered the construction of this database, we where promised (by New Labour in their first months in office) that by banning hand guns and controlling other weapons firearms deaths would go down. They haven't, the only thing that has happened is that the unarmed law abiding people are more threatened by the unlawful, who didn't and don't care if their weapon is legal, just as was warned would happen at the time.

An Englishman's Castle: Infidel Press Release

An Infidel Press Release published at An Englishman's Castle, use the Islamist fanatics own twisted version of Islam against them. If a 'martyr' is sprinked with pigs blood after death they go to hell, so mass produce a product so that any martyr can be quickly douced after his expansive exit. Knowing that by going out with a bang eternal damnation, rather than eternal carnal delight, awaits them may hey hope put off some Islamists.

Speed Cameras

An interesting article from the Times Online On speed cameras. The road nazis want to double the fines imposed by the cameras, since they nolonger have such a deterant effect on speeding. Why? Because the insurance companies don't care about people getting zapped by the damned things and so do not increase premiums because of it. So the road nazis want government to push up the fines to compensate for this. Something that I'm sure governemtn will be only too happy to do as it will help with the cameras primary function, raising revenue.

The interesting thing isn't that the road nazis want nobody to travel anywhere, ever. That has always been there goal. The interesting thing is that the insurance companies do not care about people getting zapped. It is their business to assess risk and make sure that they charge a coresponding amount to the amount of risk that they are taking on. They spend vast amounts to make sure that they get theses calculations correct. If they get them wrong they will quickly lose a lot of money either through people moving to other insurers or through claims that they hav not covered through the premiums. So the experts in risk are telling us quite clearly that speeding does not effect risk of accident. However the statistical evidence shows that speed cameras increase risk of accident. If you want direct evidence of this look at the road surface near a speed camera, it will always have skid marks completely absent from everywhere else as drivers traveling at a completely safe speed have to perform drastic action to get within the arbitary speed limit.

When looking at automated systems it is also often useful to translate them into their real world counterparts that they are replacing. In the case of a speed camera that is a Police Officer. So what happens, the camera zaps you. You are then forced to fork out or go to court. As it is illegal and against some very basic priciples of British justice for the law punish somebody without them being able to plead their case in court this fine is there to make the need to go to court (and possibly have a worse fine imposed) go away. With that in mind lets construct a conversation that models this in the real world.
Police Officer: "Good evening Sir, do you know what speed you where just going at."
Motorist: "Good evening officer, I was mroe interested in not hitting anyone and traveling at a speed safe for the conditions but I'm sure that your about to tell me."
Police Officer: "Well sir it was 60.1mph. Which as you know is illegal on this well lit empty road as the speed limit is 60mph. I am therefore going to have to arrest you, send you to court, destroying your livelyhood and making you a pariah in your community from which you will be hounded by a baying mob with pitchforks."
Motorist: "Oh dear."
Police Officer: "Or we could come to some other arrangement ..."
Motorist: "That would be awefully good of you if we could."
Police Officer: "Well just slip me say £60, and this can all go away."
[Motorist flashes the cash then goes on his way]

Yep, they have managed to automate a corrupt police officer. Great.

Village Hampden: Davis Attacks ID Cards Again

Davis Attacks ID Cards Again which is a good thing since ID Cards are a waste of money the only practical use of which is the control of ordianry citizens. The Village Hampden goes in to much greater detail on them than I want to so so go read him.

Tim Worstall: The Return of the 11 Plus.

Tim Worstall claims that the 11 Plus is coming back (no dought with some headline grabbing management speak name). However there is no link to why he thinks this, but he is reliable so it is probably true.

Pub Philosopher: Fighting the Religious Hatred Bill

The Pub Philosopher has a roundup of the campaigns Fighting the Religious Hatred Bill

The UN always up for a laugh

Some Tranzis do definitely have a good, if twisted, way of making jokes of themselves. The jokers at the UN have beaten their previous best of giving the chair of human rights comity to Libya with an even better on. The UN have invited Robert Mugabe to address a conference on hunger in Rome (behold the mighty power of the EU travel ban).

Not so secret plan to evacuate Commons

In the event of an emergency there is a secret plan to evacuate Commons to Bramshill House in Hampshire. Now this is just the kind of thing that would let Blair trigger his 'Civil Contingencies Act' giving himself total power so it is rather interesting that there is not enough seating in this new chamber for all MP's. In fact there is only enough space for 360 MP's, strangely this number seems to be very close to the number of New Labour MP's in the current building. So there is enough space for New Labour, and nobody else. Odd that.

Not in our back yard

alfred the ok is promoting a book called "Not in our backyard" (he misspells it "not in my backyard" but hey) as a way of getting pointers for resisting the fat bastard John Prescot from bulldozing perfectly good houses so that developers can make a killing selling tiny rabbit hutch flats back to the former occupants.

Passport, Identity document or Card, Tattoo number?

mikesbooksandthinks about ID Cards, there vital importance in the running of a police state, East Germany is his example. And this is what our 'freedom-loving' government wants to impose on us. I guess 'freedom-loving' was either ironic, or 'freedom-loving' as in umm tasty must consume more freedom.

Freedom To Marry

It appears the theocrats attempting to stop gay marrage are really clutching at straws and lieing. They now claim that gay marriage will automatically lead to the legalisation of poligamy (personally I have no problems with poligamy). They base this on what they claim, wrongly, has happened in Holland. It turns out that a group of a man an two women have created a private contract between themselves but not recognised by the state so that they all have the equivalent rights as if they where a married trio. This is not a legal marriage, and has nothing to do with hgay marriage civil partnerships. It is simply a contract, gay couples have in the past been forced to use similar contracts so that they can do things like visit a partner in hospital or make sure that their partner will be properly acknowleged in their will. But a contract like this is not a marriage contract.

Interestingly by going this path they unwittingly destroy one of their other arguements, that marriage is about the production of offspring which a gay couple cannot easily do. However if the proble mwas breeding then there should be no problem with poligamy since by having more females a group will be able to breed faster. A single male being easily able to produce enough sperm very few days to satify his purpose, but it requires many months of the female's time before she can actually pop the sprog. But since they are against poligamy as well marriage must be about something more than breeding.

How to Withstand the Coming Bush Economic Crisis

An interesting article from James J. Cramer of New York Magazine, he doesn't appear to be that impressed with George Bush's financial acumen

For the longest time, because Bush is a Republican, we on Wall Street simply didn’t believe that he could be a reckless spender. We knew only two paradigms: You either spent less and cut taxes or you spent more and raised taxes. Both courses at least presumed some sacrifice at some time. Not Bush’s plan. He’s gone on both the biggest spending binge and the lowest taxation course in U.S. history, which, alas, will produce gigantic liabilities down the road. Of course, he’ll be back on the ranch by the time his successor will have to deal with his inflation and currency debasement. Our only hope that financial disaster won’t strike sooner lies with the Chinese, who actually fund our deficit by buying our Treasuries—$242 billion worth, or 12 percent of all foreign holdings. If the Chinese decide to be good communists and stop buying our bonds, the Feds will have to raise rates to attract new investors and the reaper will be at our doorstep with interest rates more akin to those of South than North America. Right now, it’s not a problem. But in a year or two or maybe less, I perceive that the government will throw a bond auction and nobody will show, including the Chinese, until rates shoot up dramatically.

He then goes on to show how to build a stock portfolio that is capable of withstanding any Bush created financial disaster.

Business support for ID cards collapses

The register is still following the ID cards issue, showing how as the details become clearer support for ID Cards falls away. This time amongst the business community.

Two years ago 73 per cent of company directors were in favour of ID cards but that figure has now fallen sharply despite the London bombings.

Only 45 per cent of company directors now believe the introduction of ID cards would make British cities safer from terrorist attack and just 26 per cent think they would benefit their business.

So far the government has spent £20m on it's ID card obsession, £20 million on a scheme that benefits nobody but the authoritarians in Whitehall.

In the Media

via teh weblog of ayaan hirsi ali, Dutch politicial and former Muslim come this peice In the Media by The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. I have no idea what their biases are so read wit hcaution, but the article raises some interesting points such as:

"Like the Nazis and Communists, Militant Islamists are totalitarians – they despise democratic societies. The difference is that where Nazis saw democracy as decadent, and Communists viewed democracy as bourgeois, Militant Islamists regard democracy as blasphemous: It awards to citizens powers that belong to God -- as interpreted by them, of course."

and

Indonesia is not the only Muslim country the Islamists are targeting. In August, scores of bombs rocked Bangladesh. Only a few people were killed and the international community shrugged. But Bangladeshis got the message loud and clear: “Become more like us, more Muslim – as we define the term -- or we will make you suffer. No one can protect you. No one will even try.”

Similarly, and again with little attention from the U.N., the media or just about anyone else, southern Thailand has become the bloodiest killing ground for Muslims after Iraq. Although most Thais are Buddhists, Muslims predominate in three southern provinces. There, bombings, beheadings and drive-by shootings have killed more than 1,000 people, including moderate Muslims and Buddhist monks and teachers.

which rather blows a hole in Al Guardian's line that it is the Islamofascists that are the oppressed ones and if we hadn't invaded iraq then they would be all sweetness and light.

What not to say in an application

good and bad words to put on a CV

Cameron is looking better and better

According to Guido Fawkes

Cameron has in the past hinted that he sees some merit in decriminalising weed and has as good as admitted he smoked some wacky 'baccy at university.

he's got my vote then! Bugger, come to think of it I don't get one, oh well. He'll get mine next general election if he's the Tory leader. Apparently Guido also says that

Friends of Doc Fox have been whispering out of the corner of their mouths in the smoke-filled bars of Blackpool about Cameron's flirtation with cannabis

and whispering that this is bad apparently, rather than if he can point them to the local dealer.

Reactionaries should know that that this would in fact make him normal in modern Britain.

which makes cannabis' smoking an uncrime that should be repealed since it's current legal state is no longer in sync with social taboo. If he was just into a flat tax as well ...

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, worked up over nothing

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown a jounalist that I normally quite respect, having the courage to sometimes point out that the Muslim community is not all sweetness and light, appears to have got all hot and bothered about supposed racism in Yorkshire. Apparently she didn't like being made to feel that she did not belong in first class. Because she didn't, having not even bothered to get a ticket before boarding.

On my way to Harrogate to speak at a conference on hospice care, I am late, so rush on without a ticket. Standard class is packed and, with a column to write for the Evening Standard en route, I decide to go first class.

Sorry but even journalists have to pay for things they want, sometimes. I know this whole having to use money to buy stuff can be a bit of a drag, but it is not like white people are exempted from it. The cash point does not have a secret honky button where it will spit out the readies even if you don't have a bean to your name. I know, I've searched for it very thoroughly. At times desperately. It is not there.

Theodore Dalrymple asks, is The Guardian institutionally racist?

From the comments in The Daily Ablution Theodore Dalrymple asks, is The Guardian institutionally racist? the answer? Probably yes. OK this is a piss take of the professional victims that seem to claim that everything is institutionally racist, but unlike the professional victims he produces evidence rather than just whining that as whatever institution they are talking about isn't run entirely by (insert victim group here) it somehow must be racist.

The Daily Ablution: Two Year Old Story Leads Guardian, Indy; Black Activist Either Blind or Lying; Boobs at the Grauniad

The Daily Ablution covers the latest from Islamofascist propaganda vehicles on Two Year Old Story Leads Guardian, and in the Indy; Black Activist Either Blind or Lying.

Harry's Place: Just so you spell our name right

Harry's Place comes back at the guardian for their backhanded tribute including this handy check list of points about the article

1. The Guardian, a national ‘quality’ newspaper, is now running a weekly article by a fake, entirely invented, columnist who is spoofing elements of the ‘pro-war left’.

2. This week’s episode consists of a spoof tribute by this fictional columnist to a blogger who recently stopped blogging.

3. Ninety percent of the Guardian’s readers have no idea what Harry’s Place is and nor will they get any of the other little in-jokes from ‘Norman Johnson’.

concluding that

As was written here at the time of the first ‘Norman Johnson’ column, the joke is on the Guardian – they are spoofing a position that they barely acknowledge to their readers exists. For three years they have tried to convince people that the war against Saddam was only supported by right-wing Republicans in the US and ‘Blairite toadies’ in Britain and that only ‘neo-cons’ are concerned about Islamist terrorism. With the exception of the columns of David Aaronovitch, before he moved to a paper that goes in for a bit more diversity, they have not bothered to seriously address or give space to the parts of the US and British liberal left which did favour the armed overthrow of the Ba’athist dictatorship and they have virtually ignored pro-democracy voices in Iraq and the Middle East.

They themselves obviously have, however, read the debates that have taken place on blogs, away from the gaze of their readers but rather than bring that debate into the mainstream media through their opinion pages, the Guardian has chosen to mock an argument which it has yet to deem worthy of introduction to its readers.

Don't pretend Harry's exit is just coincidence

The paper that the liberal/Libertarian blogosphere loves to hate, Al Guardian itself, is noting the departure of Harry of Harries Place. Late of course, but you cannot expect miracles. There is only one small doubt in the back of my mind thing that makes me wonder if this appeared in a Blog first, an whether they asked permission to publish.

makes a monkey out of Green

Now this is something that I would actually buy a television to see, Philip Green psycho-christian nut job leader of 'Christian Voice' gets taken apart verbally on national TV. Good, now when somebody takes him apart physically then all will be good. Details from Gay & Lesbian Humanists and media watch watch.

UK prisoners should get vote, European court rules

OK the ECHR has ruled that UK prisoners should get vote, no matter what UK law says:

"Laws setting out who can and cannot take part in elections are to be rewritten after the European court of human rights today ruled in favour of giving British prisoners the right to vote.

Ruling in the case of a former prisoner against the United Kingdom, the Strasbourg court said the disenfranchisement of 48,000 convicts in British jails violated the European convention on human rights."

Now the European Court of Human Rights is not part of the EU, so they escape blaim this time, but this still shows an undemocratic and unaccoutable transnational body trampling over the will of the elected parliment of Britain. We should get rid of these people, the only good thing in this ruling is that it once again confirms that inhumane and degrading punishment is banned, which should have been obvious anyway, except that we are currently governed by New Labour.

Your Personal UK Movie Rating

I love self test thingies so here is anoter one Your Personal UK Movie Rating

My life has been rated:
See what your rating is!
Created by bart666

Now that's my kind of party

An interesting article on the realignment of the political landscape. Like me he detects that the old left/right economic split is nolonger relevant (the right and free markets won) however the liberal/authoritarian split is become a better way of defining political orientation. However there is nobody in the media, especially broadcasting with the BBC's old left wing biases, or party higher ranks that seems to want to acknowlge this. But there is hope, the younger members are coming through with this new outlook so that in 10 to 20 years we may have parties that reflect the politcal landscape of today.

Guardian: The EU became a commonwealth

Al Guardian is claiming that the EU is set to shift its goal from being a superstate to a commonwealth. Personally I would more expect a cat to bark [No 411], ever closer union is to deeply ingrained into the genetic makeup of EU and is one of it's founding principles. However his logic is not completely without merit, since it is based on the fact that the EU is becoming very large and incorporating a large number of countries with differing national interests and cultures.

Now only someone possessed of the deliberate obtuseness of a Daily Mail leader writer could suppose that such a broad, diverse European Union will ever be a Napoleonic, federal (in the Eurosceptic sense of the F-word), centralised, bureaucratic superstate. That's why those who do still want something like a United States of Europe think Monday was a terrible day for Europe.

Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the main author of the EU's stillborn constitutional treaty, was in despair, while Britain's Jack Straw was grinning ear to ear. Roughly speaking, the British hated the constitution because they thought it would create a French Europe, while the French hate enlargement because they think it will create a British Europe. Thus Giscard laments that these further enlargements "are obviously going to transform Europe into a large free-trade zone". That is what continental Europeans classically charge the British with wanting.

The idea behind it being that EU integration will simple grind to a halt as the competing governments seek to further their own divergent national interests and never actually agree on anything much. Which is very plausable, except for one small problem. It is predicated on the EU's descissions being made by the governments of the nation states, and while they do have a role hte main players have always been the faceless Eurocrats who do not have to worry about national interests just the interests of the EU. It's primary interest being to become a superstate run from Brussels (and Strasbourg one week in four).

Intelegent Design

What is god really was a designer

Galileo satellite navigation programme

The EU's Galileo satellite navigation programme appears to have run into a problem. Nobody wants to have to pay for it. Good, so much of the planned EU defense capability is built around Galileo that should it not get built then the rest may well fold like a house of cards and the EU being curtailed in one aspect of it's quest to become a nation state, which can only ever be a good thing.

Another Islamist terrorist attack on America

I haven't been paying attention to across the pond sothe lastest Islamist terror attack has only just come to my attention. The mainstream media is apparently trying to say that this wasn't the work of Islamists. However the bomber did attend a Mosque (bit of hint there) and outside of Sri Lanka is there anybody else that conducts suicide attacks? No that will be an Islamist calling card. However he was white which is what the MSM is going to hide behind, don't they realise that Islamofascism is an ideology that can infect anyone and has nothing to do with race.

Privacy? What privacy?

Samizdata has a long and interesting post on 'CyberWarfare' and government sponcered hacking, particually from China.

Whether an individual or a nation, the idea so many people are trying so hard to capture and archive your life is repugnant and something to be avoided if possible. The desire of States to force the equivalent of listening devices into commercial software is one of those risks which can be avoided... by using open source instead of closed systems. Actions have consequences and the result of statist meddling is to make proprietary software less viable in any market where the users are aware of and care about privacy.

We should shoot EU regulators…

"We should shoot EU regulators…" was what Michael O’Leary, boss of Ryanair, said was the solution for the EU stupid denied boarding regulations. (By posting that I am probably liable to be shot 11 times in the head, without trial or process, by one of the Tyrant Blair's enforcers as an eeeevil terrorist, so I might as well go on with the rest of this post, your just as dead with 22 bullets in you as 11.) I cannot agree more. The no frills airlines have done more to show the peoples of Europe each others gloriously diverse cultures than any number of EU diktats, simply by letting people actually visit other countries and find out for themselves. The prospect of the market doing what they claim to do, but don't, easily and cheaply has quite clearly infuriated the Eurocrats so they have crafted a regulation to kill them.

Mr O'Leary said the "numbnuts" ruling was typical of Brussels, confusing the passengers over where they were entitled to compensation and exposing the airlines to complaints and lawsuits. "I think we should blow the place up and shoot all the regulators and the airline business might actually prosper,"

This regulation means that if a plane is delayed then the passengers can claim £170 from the airline, even their ticket only cost £40! Ridiculous, but perhaps the EU really believes that the no frills flights do cost hundreds like the flag carrying airlines. Considering the levels of EU fraud out there and the ease of scamming the travel expenses system (like all EU expenses no receipt is needed, just ask for as much money as you want and there it is) perhaps they do, since MEP's expenses always seem to indicate that is the case.

Perhaps by way of compensation for stopping people from ever actually seeing foreign countries EU has created a website detailing the differences in mobile phone roaming costs across Europe, Because of there attempts to kill the no frills airlines the only people that will do multinational roaming are likely to be Eurocrats. But by making it public you will know which company is cheapest to call the countries that you will never be able to see.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Emancipatie en Integratie - web-log.nl

Ayaan Hirsi Ali has an interesting piece on her blog about Muslim attitudes to living in Britain the key quote being:

As for conforming to British culture, they were not resistant but unclear what it involved. As one put it, eating curries is now seen as a part of white British culture, so why do we need to eat fish and chips?

In otherwords, since we are willing to accomodate them to try and draw them into our culture, why should they do anything. This attitude is a rachet where we try to accomodate them, they do nothing. Since they are not integrated we do more to accomodate them and still they do nothing, so we would be forced to eventually accept Muslim culture in place of our own. Which would be much easier for them than actual integration on their part.

Biased BBC

The BBC has been showing it's pro-EU biases again.

Smile, we want to catch you

Ross Clark is attempting to defend speed cameras. He is being an idiot, and knows that is exactly what is going to be said about him, so at least he has the courage to say it. Even if it does make him an idiot. But apparently it is us Liberal bloggers who are mistaken since we "can’t work out how anyone can be in favour of liberty and speed cameras." Well no, I certainly cannot work out how penalising a useful, common, and socially accepted behaviour which harms nobody either by a fine, removing their mode of transport (and so possibly employment), or even their liberty can possibly enhance peoples liberty.

Apparently

Libertarians should welcome the use of this technology because it gives motorists greater protection against miscarriage of justice: would they really prefer it if we went back to the old system, where motorists could be fined for speeding on the word of a police officer, with no evidence to back it up?

Why, when the whole 'crime' of speeding should not even be on the statutes in the first place. We should be thankful that the eniter process has been automated so that the maximum number of people can be prosecuted for the minimal amount of effort on the part of the state for something that shouldn't even be a crime? No thanks. All this is justified by the great canard that is always implied whenever anybody tries to defend the speed laws that everybody speeding kills somebody. This is obviously not true, since it would be in the millions daily, and there are already a very large number of laws to deal with any deaths whether they involve motor vehicles or not.

Jails watchdog bans St George pins

Tie pins featuring the cross of St. George, bought to support a cancer charity, have been banned from Wakefield prison

Brian Caton of the Prison Officers' Association said: "If the only problem the chief inspector found was tie pins carrying the Cross of St George, which is after all the English national flag, then there can't be a lot wrong with Wakefield prison."

Over 600 held under terror act at Labour conference

Over 600 held under terror act at Labour conference, none for trying to do anything that could be discribed as terrorism but simply for disagreeing with New Labour policy.

Fly the Flag at your Peril, (Incredible but true)

An ex-soldier in Leeds with 26 years service has been told to take down the English flag that he flies or risk arrest. The pakisatni flags flown by other people in the area seem to be fine however, it is just being reminded that they are actually not living in an Islamic country that seems to be offensive to the colonists.

"The Police were quite candid in explaining that the complainant is Asian, probably Islamic, and lives in the area but not in my Street,(A cul-de-sac), but can see my Flag when he walks through the Park that is situated in close proximity to me. This person's discomfort was not reported to the local Police Station but to a 'Community Constable' of whom there are many since the London Bombings.

I told the Police that the Pakistani Flag is often seen flying in this area of Beeston on both Cars and Buildings and that I sometimes found that uncomfortable but was warned that 'those sort of comments were racist'."

Colin MacCabe is tearing up his Labour party card

Colin MacCabe of the Observer is leaving the Labour party, along with many many others. Mr MacCabe's reasons for leaving Labour seem rather simple, he doesn't like the totalitarian party that Labour have morphed into since becoming New Labour.

Political parties are institutions which allow debate to be turned into action; they allow people from different class backgrounds, from different regions, from different races to debate policy knowing that the conclusion of the debate will be the determination of a particular course of action. There are no debates now because there is no question about what action will be taken.

He talks about what New Labour does, it's massive waste (which despite assurances has not changed since the election) paying for bloated beaurocracy filled via patronage.

Old Labour used to run deficits to employ low-paid workers in the unproductive old public sector; New Labour runs deficits to employ highly-paid consultants in the even more unproductive new public sector. In the only industry that I know at first hand, the scale of government handouts is jawdropping. New Labour has created a new film body, the Film Council, whose overheads now exceed the production budgets of the very efficient bodies that it replaced. There is enormously wasteful duplication of government resources. Friends from every sector report the same story.

It is true that your news management is breathtakingly effective but I do not think this is cause for congratulation. You have produced systems of Treasury funding in which there's always a government nark in the room and you have backed it up with a relentless use of patronage which would make an 18th-century Whig blush. No one dares to complain about the Film Council, for example, because they know it will prejudice their next funding application.

The political landscape is changing. The main axis of disagreement used to the the left/right economic split but the right has won now everybody agrees that markets are the best way of running an economy. Now the liberal/authoritarian split is becoming increasingly the battle ground, with New Labour firmly planted in the authoritarian camp. But who will take up the Liberal cause, none of the current parties they still think that the argument is over economics.

Tim Worstall on Fuel Cells

Tim Worstall on recent developments in Fuel Cells by Rolls Royce, the main thing that Rolls Royce is adding to the mix being a turbine to take the waste heat from the reaction and turn it into electricity. The core technology of Fuel Cells being pretty well there and ripe for large scale commercialization.

Government BUY the People

When you cannot win ... cheat. That seems to be the motto of the bible bashing homophobic nutters in america that want to stop gay marriage paying their canvassers $1 a signature on their petition.

There are TWO very disturbing things going on here.

(1) The "people's petition" process in Massachusetts is being undermined by "buck a signature" out-of-state petition circulators all the while petition spokespersons like Kris Mineau continue to spout rhetoric about the process being an expression of "the people's" voice. So cut the bull Kris and tell the good people of Massachusetts who is really behind this Ballot Initiative. I wonder, is this where all the "faith based initiative" money is going?

(2) Signature gatherers clearly feel entitled to say whatever they want to get people to sign even if it is incorrect. So we not only have to worry about The Catholic Church telling people that same-sex marriage is ending civilization but we now have to worry about a "puppy-dog eyed" signature gatherer claiming that the signer is "helping him out financially" and that signing "doesn't really mean anything."

More on the Labour party's view of dissent

Brett Lock on Labour's terrifying laws and a nice anekdote about how this is not an isolated case, the anti-terror laws are used very often when confronting peaceful protesters

Earlier this year, Peter Tatchell, myself, and a group of our colleagues from OutRage! headed down to Windsor to watch the ‘Royal Wedding’™ procession and to display posters which said “Charles can Marry Twice – We Can’t Marry Once” in protest at the ban on allowing same-sex couples to wed. We were briefly detained under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act despite it being a well known fact that OutRage! is not a violent organisation and that Peter is not a terrorist. They threatened to confiscate our posters and remove us from the area if we tried to display them again. Had it not been for Peter’s encyclopaedic knowledge of the laws of free speech and protest, the might have succeeded in intimidating is into complying.

The Adventuress: I Get It Now.

The Adventuress blogs the latest example of bending over backwards to try and plicate Islamism.

Dudley Council, West Midlands, were told to remove or cover up all pig-related items, including toys, porcelain figures, calendars and even a tissue box featuring Winnie the Pooh and Piglet.

It will not work, there is no way of placating these fascists without completely submitting to them and their medieval viewpoint, unlike other terrorists they cannot even be brought to the negotiating table. There is nothing that they can negotiate over, their invisible friend is quite clear over that.

Islamic terror ... again

The 'religion of peace' is at it again. Once again Bali was the target of the brave Jihadi warriors, fucking tawts.