A strangely attractive nightmare

No, the strangely attractive nightmare referred to is not Jacqui Smith—she is not even perversely attractive—but Strange Stuff's swearblogger-style fantasy of her doom; it is an end so inventive that even the poor little Greek boy might kick himself for not coming up with it.

Slowly Jacqui Smith woke up. It had been a long day before plotting how to use the Civil Contingencies Act, the Regulation and Reform Act or some other piece of legislation that they had said they where never going to use when it was enacted to do away with the need for the impending 2010 elections.
...

She had so many residences now, all bought for her by the taxpayer, that it was hard to keep track but she was sure that this was not the same one that she had gone to sleep in. She was spot lit in the middle of a large auditorium, rank upon rank of the audience stared down at her from the shadows. Her naked body was suspended and spread wide by a set of leather straps. Beneath her squatted a complicated machine built from chromed hydraulic rams supplied by black rubber hoses.

Out of the corner of her eye she sees a middle aged couple approaching. They were wearing his and hers gimp suits and carrying a large object covered in a PVC cloth.

"I guess we should thank you really, we would never have met all of these, our new friends, were it not for the UK Criminal Justice Act 2008. Since this ludicrously broad ranging legislation banned everything but the blandest state approved pornography we decided to gather some friends together for some live action fun." The man explains.

"Unfortunately denied the blessed relief of porn people have become a bit more frustrated and their tastes ... How shall I put this? ... Have become a little more interesting...

What a cliffhanger—what on earth will happen next?

Go and find out...

Nadine Dorries is a liar

I feel that it is important that I spell it out in black and white, because otherwise Nadine's tiny, wee brain may not be able to engage with the concept. Just stop it, Nadine: we've rumbled you. Stop lying and pretending that you aren't.

I know that, as a politician, lying is like a reflex action for you but, seriously, we've got the data, you lying, hypocritical bitch. Please, ladies and gentlemen, hie thee over to Unity's place, where he lays out (in one of his shorter posts) the data which shows—for the nth time—that Nadine Dorries is a liar.

For an all too brief moment I thought that Mad Nad might be gearing up for a startling admission:

When on TV, It’s ok to argue your point as hard as you wish, and to use evidence and statistics to back that point up.

It’s not ok to lie.

What? Is this to be a belated mea culpa from Dorries?

Have you got that, everyone? Nadine says that it is not OK to lie. Absolutely wrong it is, oh yes, that evil lying. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Lying is wrong.

So why do you keep doing it, Nadine?

No, of course not. It’s just the usual piss poor attempt to smear an opponent while lying through her teeth herself:

There is no NHS hospital which will carry out abortions over 16 weeks, unless the mothers life really is in serious danger and in those cases the hospitals are in Newcastle and London, North and South.

All abortions over sixteen weeks are carried out in private clinics, cross charged to the government.

We have a government policy which says it’s ok to abort to 24 weeks, and an NHS which doesn’t want to put that policy into practice.

And so an abortion industry has built up around government policy.

The lady from the pro-abortion lobby whose organisation is paid for by the unions, announced with gusto, “that’s not true,” when I made the point that no NHS hospital will carry out abortions over 16 weeks.

All of which creates something of a problem for Nadine as the statistics don’t lie and prove conclusively that NHS hospitals do carry out a significant number of abortions at 16 weeks gestation and over on ’social grounds’, all of which Nadine would know had she simply consulted the Department of Health’s published abortion statistics.

If you want the statistics which show that Nadine is a lying little liar with lying disease and pants on fire, then Unity's got 'em. His conclusion at the end of his exposé of Nadine's lies?

I’ve seen some lousy and discreditable performances by backbench MPs over the years but I really do think that one would have to go right back to the 1980s and the era of John Carlisle and Peter Bruinvels and their defence of the apartheid regime in South Africa - for which they were dubbed the MPs for Johannesburg East and West - to find such a sustained and disreputable campaign of utter mendacity and contempt for the electorate as that perpetrated by Nadine Dorries in her efforts to cheat her way to a reduction in the upper limit for legal abortions in the UK.

Perhaps the only saving grace in all this is that the longer this goes on the more I’m rapidly accumulating enough material to make for a potentially interesting book on political propaganda and the manner in which the anti-abortion lobby has come to rely on smears, misinformation, outright lies and the promotion of what amounts to little more than a stream of conspiracy theories in an effort to manipulate public opinion.

Who knows, when all this is done an dusted, it a book I may get around to writing that book, if only for the pleasure of tearing Nadine Dorries to pieces once and for all.

In the meantime, if you live in Mid-Bedfordshire, why not use WriteToThem.com to send Nadine an email asking her why she just cannot stop lying? Additionally, why not ask her when we might expect anything other than a lie to pass her lips and, if lying is wrong (by her own admission), why she continues to tell massive, whopping lies? The skinny fucking liar.

I know that I may have been overly subtle in this post, but what I was trying to convey is that Nadine Dorries is a liar. Did that come across at all?

That she's a liar, I mean?

UPDATE: Bookdrunk's on this too...

Moron of the Week: Barack Obama

Via Matthew Sinclair, I find Dominic Lawson's article on the great American Presidential race. Now, as you may have realised, I take little interest in the US Presidential nominations; my philosophy is that, whoever is in the White House, our government will maintain the so-called "special relationship" and the US President will do precisely what they like anyway so it makes very little difference. Plus, of course, I'm not a US citizen, so sticking my oar in might be a little pointless.

However, it seems to me that Barack Obama is either a lying bastard or a protectionist moron with zero understanding of economics.

The most extraordinary thing is that Obama has actually been pandering to the "bitterness" he identified – the "anti-trade sentiment". In the rust belts of Ohio and Pennsylvania the Senator from Illinois has lost no opportunity to blame America's economic woes on the free-trade treaty with Canada and Mexico (Nafta) – which had been enacted by President Clinton.

Obama is one of three Congressional sponsors of "The Patriot Employer Act", which seeks to give preferential tax status to American companies that choose not to invest overseas. His anti-globalisation rhetoric goes far beyond criticism of free-trade deals such as Nafta. Obama told voters in New Hampshire:"I would stop the import of all toys from China". China supplies 80 per cent of the toys sold in the US, so that's one heck of a pile of embargoed fluffy bunnies.

The man is a total idiot and he will impoverish the US in a spectacular way if he does enact any of these policies.

I don't care what colour he is: I do care that he is either a lying bastard or a lackwit, fuckwit tit.

Students are still morons shock!

In May, the UK Libertarian Party has been invited to engage in a debate at the political society of Trinity College, Oxford. Ahead of that, the student paper, Cherwell, has published an article on the party's policies.

Which is, of course, all very well except that it demonstrates just how pissing ignorant students are, even at our "top" universities. And so, since they have fired the opening salvo, I feel duty-bound to reply (oh, and it is a pleasure too).

Let us take the first idiot into our stride, shall we?

Guy Levin, President of OUCA, said, “I’m looking forward to the visit, and I’m sure it will be of interest to some of OUCA’s members.

“Regardless, I think that a vote for the Libertarian Party is a wasted vote. Those who agree with broadly libertarian principles of lower taxation and less state interference would be best served by a Conservative government."

You are, Guy, without doubt, a fucking moron. Those who believe in "lower taxation and less state interference" might be better served by a Conservative government, but not even tribalist fools like The Dude think that those desiring "broadly libertarian principles" will be best served by a Tory government.

The Tories have absolutely committed themselves against tax cuts and not a single one of their policies advocates less government on any level.

The Tories have absolutely committed themselves to remaining within the EU; one of the singularly most damaging entities on the planet. Further, since the EU controls a significant amount of our legislation, a goodly amount of things that the Tories are promising are simply not possible.

Furthermore, libertarianism is about both economic and social freedom and if you think that the Tories are pro the latter, then you are so stupid that you should never open your mouth ever again.

Now, you may believe that the Tories are the only other party that has a chance of getting into power, but that is an entirely different argument. After all, if all of the people that I know personally who hold their nose whilst voting for the Conservatives actually voted for a party that they believed in, then so-called minor parties might have a better chance of getting anywhere.

“I personally disagree with many of the Libertarian Party’s proposed policies, such as the total abolition of income taxes...

Why? Do you think that this tax—which was introduced to fight the Napoleonic Wars—is in some way morally right? Or is it that you are so used to the idea that you will happily grant the government access to your intimate earning detail because... well... that's just what one does?

Let me quote the Adam Smith Institute again, if I may.

If the government sector had grown only in line with inflation, rather than far above it, taxpayers would be £200 billion better off – enough to abolish income tax, corporation tax, capital gains tax and inheritance tax.

But hey! Guy's only a student: I don't expect him actually to look up any figures. He's at Oxford, you know, and Oxford students are just the cleverest, most well-informed chaps in the entire country, don'cha know (they aren't. That was sarcasm. I've known too many of them to believe that shit. It's a great pity that they all seem to believe it).

... the NHS...

Because that's just great isn't it? Ten times more deaths from C. difficile than any other country on the world and 17,000 people a year dead, unnecessarily, because you support a state monopoly. I hope that you fucking pray for forgiveness for supporting the unnecessary deaths, of 47 people a day, every fucking night, sunshine.

And I hope that your god forgives you, because I won't.

... and state pensions,” he added.

Riiiight. Because state pensions are just the absolute best, aren't they? Anyone remember the desultory rise of a few years ago? What was it: 75p a week? Nice one.

As I have consistently pointed out, NICs is not only a Ponzi scheme con but also costs more than twice as much as comparable private schemes: but then, students wouldn't know anything about that, would they?

Another Oxford student, who describes himself as a Liberal Democrat, said, “From their website, the Libertarian Party’s main policy seems to be abolishing income tax. That’s just infeasible in the modern era. They don’t offer any realistic solutions or projected figures. To me, their income tax policy seems irrational and ridiculous.

Of course it does, my poppet; but that is why we are coming to speak to you. Because, you see, we have actually done the number-crunching and we know what we can afford. Unlike you, you see, we have actually trawled through the government's spending figures and we know, pretty much, where everything is spent.

“If they are coming to Oxford to talk about their policies, I’m sure any audience would tear them to pieces.”

Oh, I'm looking forward to it: believe me. We are going to shake up your comfortable, middle-class, dissociated-from-the-grunts assumptions and your nice, social democrat lives. We are going to quote figures that you have never heard of; we are going to show you why your policies are not merely wrong-headed but actively evil.

We are going to pull you fuckers to pieces and if just a few of you go away and contemplate what you have heard, then we will consider it a victory.

Martin Nelson, President of the Oxford University Liberal Democrats criticised the party ‘s policy line on the grounds that its practical application was too inflexible.

He argued, “Real freedom of choice depends upon the economic situation in which you find yourself. We simply do not think that you can take a policy [of libertarianism] and extend it to every situation.”

Bollocks. Either you are free to make your own choices or you are not. How many on The Times rich list are from humble backgrouds? Did they assume that they could never become multi-millionaires?

Now, I'm aware that it might be difficult to explain the problems of the poverty trap to a bunch of middle-class student wankers who assume that, because they are at Oxford, they are the creme de la creme, but we shall do our very best.

Whatever people might think, we are not about supporting the rich but about giving the poor the opportunity to shine. We are not about holding people back, but about giving everyone the chance to be great.

That the middle- and upper-class pricks of Oxford should disagree with this aim is not surprising, but it should be challenged.

UPDATE: it has been pointed out to me that I may have been a little harsh with these young student types, and possibly that is the case.

However, what it is indicative of is the unthinking, knee-jerk statist attitude of the young (and it is distressingly prevalent in the not-so-young too); we can't do x because... because... well, we just can't.

[stamps foot]

Seriously, I did rather hope that there might be a little more contemplation from Oxford students. But no, apparently the audience will "tear [us] to pieces". We shall see...

Cuts

As we all know, from Burning Our Money if nowhere else, the Gershon cuts have been less than effective. And now this little nugget reaches your humble Devil, from a source who is in a position to know (you will have to take my word for this, I'm afraid).

They made so many people redundant [from the Treasury] that there aren't people to do stuff that's needed.

Including the changes for the 10p u-turn from Gordo.

They needed someone to make a change to the tax credits database not long ago and found they'd laid off all the developers with the clearance needed to edit the database.

But, really, the state is your friend and is absolutely the best entity for ensuring effectiveness throughout our society.

The above was sarcasm, by the way; if you believe any of that you are a despicable idiot who should go and drown themselves in a small pond.

Britain is top!

Yes, that's right, folks; as Chicken Yoghurt has pointed out, Britain is top at topping sick people!

Are you watching China? Get back in your box, Vladimir Putin. Cool your jets, India. Britain is back on top:

Ten times as many elderly patients are killed by the hospital superbug Clostridium difficile in the UK than in any other country, a medical expert has claimed.

Can’t produce a politician, a football team or a manufacturing industry worth a damn but we can kill our old people LIKE NOBODY ELSE ON THE PLANET!

Thank goodness that only we were far-sighted enough to form the NHS, eh? Now that's what I call a number one health service: I always knew that it would pay off!

Thank goodness that we went down the state monopoly route rather than one of those namby-pamby Continental-style multi-payer, multi-provider health systems, eh?

We are the champions; we are the champions, my friend...

The EU is a pus-ridden, piece of shit...

... and anyone who supports it in its current form is an utter, utter cunt who should be fucked viciously up the arse with a salt-encrusted, barbed wire dildo. It goes without saying that there is no lube involved. So, that includes everyone who is in the leadership Labour, Lib Dem or Conservative Party, plus most of their supporters, hangers-on and members.

As for those who support the EU in principle whilst admitting that it is not the organisation that you'd like it to be, well, you are a bunch of awful, shit-eating bastards too, frankly. Supporting our membership of this organisation because it might get better is broadly analogous to advocating that we should have joined the USSR because "Uncle Joe might be killing people now and fucking the entire economy, but if Communism was done properly it would be really nice and just and fluffy and all". You are terrible fucks whose reproductive organs should be ripped out, devilled and force-fed to you.

You are all destroyers of small business, people who would deny others the freedom to make a living; you are supporters of corporatism, oligarchies and unelected dictatorships; you are murderers by proxy of the disadvantaged, rapers of ambition and fuckers of aspiration; you are deeply unpleasant cunts and even these words cannot convey the depths of my contempt for you.

And what has raised my ire? It is this Booker piece about yet more repressive legislation, in the Roman Law model, from the EU.

Anyone wishing an insight into how the real government of our country now works might consider the plight of Quatchem, a small but enterprising chemical company in Oldham, which makes a range of disinfectant products.

Two years ago, under its director and part-owner Dr Rubinah Chowdhary, an experienced biochemist, the firm was looking to expand its business and its product range - until it ran into something called the Biocidal Products directive, issued by Brussels in 1998 but only now coming fully into force.

Since then the company's expansion plans have had to be put on hold. Hundreds of hours a week, including the time of two PhDs and a quarter of its workforce, have been taken up just with fillng forms and trying to work out how to comply with the directive's astonishingly complex requirements.

And for why?

The task is twofold. First, under the directive's Annex 1, the firm must win a general "listing" for its main basic material, a common chemical known as benzalkonium chloride, which for nearly a century has been safely put to an extensive variety of uses, for example in baby wipes, antiseptic skin creams such as Savlon, soaps and disinfectants used in food and veterinary premises.

Even though this compound provides the basis for thousands of commercial products, no company will be able to use it without a listing from an EU office in Italy.

Right, so we have a chemical that has been in use for decades (if not longer) that now must be listed with the EU to be permitted. This is much the same process that must be gone through with the REACH Directives, of course.

On a broader point, it is also employing the Roman Law method (as opposed to our Common Law): everything is illegal unless made specifically legal.

Brussels imagined that companies might get together to share the colossal costs of this process, involving dossiers of technical data running to thousands of pages and expensive testing against new safety standards.

But although the larger chemical companies have formed consortia for this purpose, some opening offices near those of the authorising authority, they make it impossible for their smaller competitors to join them.

Well, fuck me: ain't that a surprise? The big pharmaceutical companies have banded together to form an effective oligarchy. Well, who would have fucking thunk it?

Not the fucking tossers in Brussels, evidently, the evil, technocrat, fuckwit cunts.

Quatchem has found it difficult enough to establish with the Italian officials, who appear to have little experience of this chemical, just what is required to get listing. But even if the firm succeeds it will then, under the directive's Annex 6, need to apply to the Health and Safety Executive, as the "competent authority" designated by Brussels in Britain, for separate "market authorisations" for each of the dozens of products it sells based on the same compound.

For each of these, Quatchem will have to pay a further fee, estimated by the HSE at up to £20,000 a time.

Dr Chowdhary has calculated, from the impact statement published with the directive, that to go on selling her present products may cost her firm as much as £6.5 million. Its annual turnover is £2 million.

So, basically, Quatchem will either have to take on crippling debts at a time when credit is scarce or it will go out of business. Nice fucking work.

Since these costs will be much the same for her as for a multinational with a turnover of billions, she says: "I do not know how a directive could have been designed like this. The needs of smaller businesses have simply not been allowed for. It is astounding."

They don't care about you, Dr Chowdry. They knew that this would happen.

The reality seems even worse. It is clear from the impact statement that Brussels knew, when it drafted the directive, that it would put what it calls small and medium enterprises (SMEs) at a significant disadvantage against their big competitors. "SMEs," it admits, "are particularly affected by the directive, while larger companies are more likely to be able to bear the costs of dossier preparation."
...

The only people rejoicing at this example of regulatory overkill are those multinational companies that played a considerable part in drafting the directive. Such is the horrifying record of regulation in potentially toxic chemical products (eg the organophosphates manufactured by multinational pharmaceutical companies) that we cannot confidently look to the new EU-wide army of unqualified bureaucrats for any gain in safety.

And herein lies much of the problem: the big multinationals are able to afford to lobby for particular Directive changes, to afford expensive consultations; the very process of law-making is skewed to the multinational corporates.

The result is to entrench their position through legislation that stops small competitors before they can even get started. This is state-sponsored corporatism and it is deeply wrong, inefficient and detrimental to progress.

Further, it must be stressed that we do not have a free market; it is legislation such as this that ensures that only large corporations can compete in this area. It is the formation of an effective monopolies and it must always be stressed that monopolies cannot exist in a free market. Only states can form monopolies because the only way in which monopolies can be formed is through legislation.

The Biocidal Products Directive does not actively ban competitors but it does raise the barriers to entry so high that it effectively does the same job.

One likely upshot of the directive is that many of the 1,000 SMEs in Britain that rely on chemical formulations for their products will be unable to afford the costs (most of them wholly unnecessary - chemicals such as benzalkonium chloride have been exhaustively documented for decades).

Most will be forced out of business. Many useful products will disappear from the market. The cost of developing new, more effective products, in a market where most are low-value and offer only small profit margins, will be so prohibitive that innovation will be stifled.

And the human race, as an entire entity, will suffer. We will suffer from the withdrawal of products, we will suffer because of all of those products—which include drugs, medicines and other beneficial innovations—that will now never be invented. The people of the EU, in particular, will suffer as innovators move abroad to develop their products, and sell them in countries that are not ruled by oligarchical diktat influenced by corporations.

One of the most spectacular recent failures of the EU is the Lisbon Strategy, part of the aim of which is to make the EU "the most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth".

Don't make me fucking laugh.

Can anyone see, from the above story, why the EU hasn't got a fucking hope in hell? Can anyone see how EU regulations stifle innovation and strangle aspiration?

That is why those of you who support this organisation are such evil, fucking cunts who should be beaten to death with your own entrails. You are, quite simply, scum.

UPDATE: There's more on this over at EU Referendum, in which Dr North expands on just exactly how these regulations absolutely screw over small businesses at least three times. One might term it the Making Small Businesses Airtight legisalation.

UPDATE 2: Timmy also illustrates problems with this legislation.

And thus Marx’s prediction becomes true, markets slide towards monopoly. But not because of the inevitability of this happening in a market economy, but becuase of the interaction of big government and big business.

Just as an example here, I complained about the restrictions that REACH places upon one of our imports. One Europhile federast said that it was simple, I should simply band together with my competitors to pay the costs of registration and testing of the product.

Erm, I don’t actually know who all my competitors are for a start. And even if we did, and we combined to get that registration, there is no way that we can stop a new entrant into the market from using that registration without paying for it or contributing to our costs. Given that the cost of the registration is of the order of €100,000 and the whole EU market is worth €500,000 a year, on tight margins, that’s something of a problem really, don’t you think?

Indeed. It's fucking insanity and it is not going to get any better.

Bob Piper: Labour Party members have never had a wank

It always amuses me when the Left paint themselves as the party of social tolerance when the vast majority of them are, in fact, as po-faced and censorious as the bloody Tories.

Let us take Bob Piper's comment on Lord Laidlaw's somewhat energetic romps.

A top Tory funder, a man who donated 25,000 pounds to Boris Johnson's Mayoral campaign, is exposed as participating in cocaine-sniffing orgies, and what does a top Tory blogger have to say about it? Well, it's all Harriet Harman's fault apparently for not opening up legal brothels to allow Laidlaw and co. to get their leg over in.

You see, this is typical of censorious little pricks like Piper: you see, much as these people tend to claim that they and they alone care about the poor and disadvantaged, they don't.

You see, if people like Bob actually gave a crap about the poor and disadvantaged then they would support the policies that best aided such people, and not those that merely fitted their own prejudices.

If, for instance, Bob Piper cared about prostitutes, the idiot would acknowledge that prohibition, of anything, doesn't work and that the reason to legalise brothels is not so that "Laidlaw and co. to get their leg over" (although, if they should wish to do so, a voluntary contract between two (or more) consenting adults is no business of the state's) but because it will protect those working in the sex industry.

I have long advocated the legalisation and regulation of brothels: the advantages are huge and most of the gains are made by those working in the sex industry.

Just think: we could have legal, licensed brothels turning over a profit (and paying tax); where the girls (and boys) are cared for, given regular medical check-ups (which are paid for by the brothel and not the taxpayer) and are protected from drug-pushing pimps and violent clients. Plus, of course, the bottom would fall out of the illegal trafficking market or, at the very least, police would be able to focus more resources on that problem.

What's not to like? Both the clients and the prostitutes themselves would be safer, healthier and happier.

Well, we know who doesn't like this: inflexible, stupid tossers like Bob Piper.

What a desparately sad attempt to deflect attention.

Coming from you, Piper, that's a bit rich, frankly. And don't tell me that you wouldn't do precisely the same thing were it a Labour apparatchik. You and Iain are both as tribal as each other.

Presumably Iain and his Tory colleagues also want to see the legalisation of hard drugs too.

No, I don't think that they do: that would require more courage than any of them have.

I, however, am a big fan of the legalisation of all drugs. Unlike with prostitutes (which I have never used ('cos I am so purdy, y'see), I have used considerable amounts of hard drugs, in both quantity and quality, and I have never lost a job, beat up my family, killed anyone, mugged anyone, etc. Nor am I a hopeless, stumbling junkie.

I summarised my experiences with drugs, and the reasons why prohibition is bad, in this post.

So, to summarise:

1. The illegality of drugs is very bad. It makes criminals of otherwise law-abiding people; it creates turf-wars and provides vast profits for crime lords; it ensures that many drugs are full of rat-poison, brinck dust and other crap which adversely harms the health of the users far more than the drug itself would do.


2. From an ideological point of view, it is none of the state's business what I ingest provided that I do not impinge on the rights of others. And most people who take drugs do not impinge on the rights of others. At all.


3. From the point of view of (2), the drugs that are legal are, in most cases, worse than those that are illegal.


4. Drugs are rarely bad and in a lot of cases they are positively good.

Most people who take drugs, even regularly, are not addicts. They do not require state support, and most would not look for it anyway. The vast majority of people who take drugs for recreation are middle-class people who have jobs that allow them to afford drugs.

Those who live off the state and are addicts are usually one and the same and I do not think that this group would substantially increase with legalisation.

However, most illegal drugs are quite powerful, and do require some caution. So...

1. Legalise drugs.


2. Educate people about the true effects of drugs (rather better than in my elementary primer above!).


3. Regulate their sale and their purity, through licensing, as we do with alcohol and cigarettes (this is one of the few areas that I can see state regulation being desirable (although there could also be private mechanisms for this)).


4. Tax them to pay for the negative externalities caused by those very few who require state help.

Legalise, educate, regulate, tax: my four point plan for dealing with drugs.

And, believe me, I think that everyone would be a lot happier...

For a really distressing, irritating yet illuminating read on why drugs are illegal (it was the bastard Americans: this may be the most damaging and hypocritical thing that they have done in their history) and just why this policy has been so appallingly damaging, then I cannot recommend enough the IEA's book, Prohibitions [free PDF download].

The book details several areas that have been banned or look to be banned—Recreational drugs, Boxing, Firearms, Advertising, Pornography, Medical drugs and devices, Prostitution, Gambling, Human body parts for transplantation and Alcohol—and then examines the lead-up to the prohibitions, the legislative process, the history and the effects of the bans. It is very accessible and informative: seriously, read it.

I read the section on how drugs were banned—in the teeth of common sense and evidence against such a measure—and nearly wept with frustration. The same applies to their examination of prostitution.

Seriously, Bob, you want a better society? Read this book and understand why bans don't work and why they harm the most vulnerable in society.

I suppose when you consider Dominic Fisher's (PragueTory) allegations that at least one Tory front bench spokesman was an alcohol, substance and self-abuser, it wouldn't come as too much of a surprise.

Oh right, Bob, because there are no such figures in the Labour Party, of course. And you note that one of the Tory front bench is a "self-abuser" in a slightly snotty tone? Are you trying to say that no one in the Labour Party has ever had a wank?

Strange really. You socialists seem so blind to the disastrous consequences of your policies that I had assumed that you were spanking the monkey at every opportunity.

I suppose that, faced with such an authoritative source, I shall have to stop calling NuLabour a bunch of wankers.

However, Lord Laidlaw does deserve condemnation but only because what he did is illegal—whether or not it should be is another matter (it shouldn't)—and he is part of the legislature.

And, Laidlaw's actions do, of course, display a certain amount of hypocrisy—although it pales into insignificance beside, say, Prescott's admission of a mental illness whilst his government cuts funding for treating such conditions—but then Laidlaw is a politician (albeit only in the second chamber): what does one expect?

P.S. Needless to say, the legalisation of prostitution and drugs are both Libertarian Party policies. And no, there'll be no compromise on these issues.

UPDATE: having read the whole article, all is not as it seems. Firstly, the orgies were in Laidlaw's Monaco home. [Emphasis mine.]

A News of the World investigation has revealed the sex-mad baron hires up to FIVE vice girls at a time for all-night orgies of spanking, bondage and lesbian lust at his Monaco tax haven.

Does anyone know what the status of prostitution is in Monaco? But prostitution is certainly not illegal in Britain; I wouldn't have though that it would be in Monaco.

Further, the coke-fuelled bit does not, it seems, apply to Laidlaw himself. [Emphasis mine.]

In the £6,000-a-night presidential suite the hookers snorted cocaine and guzzled champagne before getting down to the depraved main event.

One of Laidlaw's stunning escort girls, 22-year-old Vogue model Michelli Vignardi told us it was a "crazy" party, but added that Laidlaw DOESN'T indulge in the coke.

But brunette Michelli added: "Irvine was drinking and taking the sex drug Viagra. He f***ed me and another girl. He can still f***.

OK, so Laidlaw didn't take any cocaine, and Viagra is not illegal. And nor is fucking (although I am sure that, like Party in 1984, NuLabour would like to prohibit orgasms).

So, Laidlaw took no illegal drugs. I don't know the status of Monaco's prostitution laws, but prostitution is legal in Britain, so I'll assume that it is in Monaco.

So, actually, I was wrong: Laidlaw has done absolutely nothing illegal whatsoever.

ASI on LPUK

Those fine people at the Adam Smith Institute have evidently been trawling through the Libertarian Party manifesto with some care, and produced as elegant a primer as one might wish to see.

Now they are beginning to assemble a very credible programme that would see the reduction of the size of the state and a restoration of individual responsibility.

The first highlighted manifesto policy is the abolition of personal income tax. It is a well thought through and well argued for piece of legislation that the LP would seek to introduce in the second year of them being in power and would finally, after 200+ years, rid us of this 'temporary' tax. This is the cornerstone of their economic programme which would also see them lower corporation tax to 10%, abolish IHT and CGT, the replacement of VAT with a national sales tax and Council Tax replaced with a local sales tax. As well as the strengthening of the Bank of England's independence they would also reduce government borrowing to zero and abolish the minimum wage. All very sound libertarian actions to take to drive an economy forward and free the market.

The manifesto is steeped in the notion of the rule of law which encompasses property rights, due process, equality and transparency. It outlines broad swathes of policy and the party's initial ideas concerning what action needs to be taken to free people from the dead hand of the state. Highlights include an end to the state monopolies in health and education, the former through a move to an insurance-based system the latter through a move to a Swedish style voucher system (similar to the one we covered here), a return to a more responsive and local police force, a localised planning system, a review of EU/UN membership and the removal of the welfare state hammock.

Yes, that is a pretty fair summary of our initial plans for making this country great again; now we have to be able to present those policies to the entire country and find the funds to put up candidates.

This latter point is going to be interesting as we have pledged not to take donations from companies, only individuals: will our unwillingness to be bought by special interests pay a dividend, as it were, in trust or will it just leave us in the wilderness?

They are turning into a very well organized political party with appealing policies, so keep an eye on them. They may well surprise people in a few years time!

Well, let us hope so. Whatever, we are in for the long haul...

Quote of the Day

John Redwood is deeply irritated by the bullying tactics employed by the BBC when trying to extract licence fee money from those without a TV. The whole post is good, but I particularly liked this line.

Their inspectors will, of course, be wasting their time in my case, as I am most unlikely to be in any time they call, unless I am to experience the knock at the door at 2 am, to confirm that I am living in a version of the Soviet Union circa 1960.

Nice. I might pinch it...

The cause of Prescott's bulimia

A monocular fucking cunt of a man, yesterday.

Guido has been documenting what he calls "The Curse of Jonah Brown" for some time now. The basic premise is that whatever Gordon touches turns to shit.

If he supports a sport team, they lose. He goes to the US, and the dollar loses value. He appears on American Idol and the show loses thousands of viewers.

Now, my theory is that, so pronounced is this curse, it was Brown who was responsible for Prescott consistently losing his lunch...

Good blogs: Falco

I try to vary the bloggers to whom I link in a single day, but for this post I am going to make an exception because Falco's Don't Set Fire To Your Jacket is quite simply one of the very best libertarian blogs out here and, even at risk of writing a hagiography, I wanted to highlight some of his posts.

First up is Falco's variation on Pastor Niemoller's ditty.

First they came for....

the tokers, and I was rather irritated because I like the odd toke.

Then they came for them as likes shrooms, and was narked because they are silly and fun.

Then they came for the protesters, and my blood boiled with furious indignation at the bastards.

Then they came for the smokers, and as they ripped away our liberty they told us that they were giving us more.

Now they're coming for the drinkers, and they may have made a mistake here.

Next up (and you may notice a theme developing here), he points out that alcohol does not cause anything at all (and that the New Scientist is pretty shit much of the time but fucking ignorant twats tend to treat its hysteria as gospel because... well, because it has the word "scientist" in the title).

This week they've managed to piss me off so much I may well feed their editorial team through a shredder:

"Alcohol is responsible for 16% of Europe's cases of child abuse and neglect,"

No you shit for brains fuckwits, the people abusing or neglecting are responsible for 100% of it, pissed or sober. Alcohol is a thing, not a thinking being and cannot "be responsible" for people's actions or anything else.

Next up is Falco's attack on the idea of "passive drinking", which he, quite correctly, terms "Utter Bollocks".

One of the major problems with "Utter Bollocks" is that it blames the drink not the person for their behavior. If someone spikes your drink, (an occurrence much rarer than believed but it does happen), then you have a defence because you did not willingly get yourself into a state. If you choose to drink a bottle of vodka and then throw up on someone you have to face the consequences of your actions.

I find "Utter Bollocks" repugnant on both sides of Libertarianism. You should be free to ingest whatever you desire, equally you must be held responsible for your actions if you willingly enter such a state. I view the promoters of "Utter Bollocks" as nasty little shits, keen to control our lives because of the satisfaction it gives them and keener still to infantilise us to make that job easier. I suggest they go take a running jump into a pit of chili oiled spikes.

And here he is on racism (and the stupidity of Sunny Hundal).

Not only is it impossible to completely separate economic and social policies but the idiocy of conflating "Right Wing" with "Racist" makes my blood boil. There are racist and non racists on either side of the political fence and it is a separate belief that has little to do with any other political affiliation.

And here Falco looks at a couple of Through the Looking Glass moments concerning idiot Lefties.

And, finally, he looks at the erosion of our liberties.

The problem is "Salami Tactics", (see 1.20 in), each little erosion of Liberty is seen as not worth bothering with but they add up over time and before you know it you have nothing left. Instead of a Nuclear Option, we must resist each time those in power attempt to take away our remaining Liberties and demand back those they have stolen from us.

Seriously, Don't Set Fire To Your Jacket is a great blog (and Falco is a very decent chap, too. Plus, of course, he is a member of the Libertarian Party. QED) and should be added to your daily reads forthwith...

Educating the masses

It seems that Archbishop Cramner has been sent this amusing little nugget.

1. Teaching Maths In 1970:
   A logger sells a truckload of lumber for £100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price. What is his profit?


2. Teaching Maths In 1980:
   A logger sells a truckload of lumber for £100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price, or £80. What is his profit?


3. Teaching Maths In 1990:
   A logger sells a truckload of lumber for £100. His cost of production is £80. Did he make a profit?


4. Teaching Maths In 2000:
   A logger sells a truckload of lumber for £100. His cost of production is £80 and his profit is £20. Your assignment: Underline the number 20.


5. Teaching Maths In 2008:
   A logger cuts down a beautiful forest because he is selfish and inconsiderate and cares nothing for the habitat of animals or the preservation of our woodlands. He does this so he can make a profit of £20. What do you think of this way of making a living? Topic for class participation after answering the question: How did the birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut down their homes? (There are no wrong answers.)


6. Teaching Maths 2018:
   أ المسجل تبيع حموله شاحنة من الخشب من اجل 100 دولار. صاحب تكلفة الانتاج من الثمن. ما هو الربح

Most entertaining. Or it would be were there not a large grain of truth in it...

The Irish Referendum

Now, I happen to like this PledgeBank idea, which was started by Matt of Woking Libertarians.

I will buy 1 pint of Guiness and a £5 bet for a member of the Irish Republic, IF they save Europe by voting NO to the Lisbon Treaty but only if 1,000 other freedom and democracy lovers will do the same.

Can you imagine how amusing it would be to see the faces of The Colleagues when confronted with a "piss off, you totalitarian bastards" result in the Lisbon Treaty referendum?

Go and sign up, people!

Cacheing In

Your humble Devil has been slightly concerned by the fact that his once reliable server has been falling over quite a lot recently. Indeed, the other night, it fell over three times in the space of half an hour—apparently because Timmy had been linked to by Instapundit.

This just shouldn't happen: the server is quite fast, has unlimited bandwidth and is nowhere near capacity storage-wise. Why should it keep falling down?

And then, via Daring Fireball, I found this Coding Horror article—Behold WordPress, Destroyer of CPUs.

I've been thoroughly impressed with the community around WordPress, and the software itself is remarkably polished. That's not to say that I haven't run into a few egregious bugs in the 2.5 release, but on the whole, the experience has been good bordering on pleasant.

Or at least it was, until I noticed how much CPU time the PHP FastCGI process was using for modest little old blog.stackoverflow.com.


For context, this is running on a Windows Web Server 2008 virtual machine with a single core of a 2.13 GHz Xeon 3210 entirely dedicated to it.

This is an incredibly scary result; blog.stackoverflow.com is getting, at best, a moderate trickle of incoming traffic. It's barely linked anywhere! With that kind of CPU load level, this site would fall over instantaneously if it got remotely popular, or God forbid, anywhere near the front page of a social bookmarking website.

For a bare-bones blog which is doing approximately nothing, this is a completely unacceptable result. It's appalling.

And now that I think about it, my server only really started crashing regularly when I started to install WordPress blogs on it (for a variety of other reasons, mainly to do with design, I wouldn't touch WP with a bargepole if I had the option).

And, thinking about it further, the server has been crashing proportionately more, the more WP blogs I have installed. And now, I'm pretty sure that I know why.

There is a solution, which I have just implemented on Timmy's blog and I shall try to roll out to the others when I have time.

As evidence of what a systemic problem this is, there's an entire cottage industry built around shoehorning better caching behavior into WordPress. Take your pick: WP-Cache, WP-Super-Cache, or Bad Behavior.

It is WP Super-Cache that I have installed, and I shall be monitoring how it goes. The results should be good, as Jeff illustrates.

Does it work? Does it ever. Here's what CPU usage looks like with basic WP-Cache type functionality enabled:

But this is a little known problem, right? Wrong.

I'm not alone; just do a web search on WordPress CPU usage or WordPress Digg Effect and you'll find page after page of horror stories, most (all?) of which are solved by the swift and judicious application of the WP-Cache plugins.

Thanks a fucking bunch, WordPress; are you going to do anything about it?

It's not like this a new issue. Personally, I think it's absolutely irresponsible that WP-Cache like functionality isn't already built into WordPress. I would not even consider deploying WordPress anywhere without it. And yet, according to a recent podcast, Matt Mullenweg dismisses it out of hand and hand-wavingly alludes to vague TechCrunch server reconfigurations.

Well, thanks a fucking bunch, WP team. You cunts.

A default WordPress install will query the database twenty times every time you refresh the page, even if not one single element on that page has changed. Doesn't that strike you as a bad idea? Maybe even, dare I say it, sloppy programming?

Twenty fucking times? That's not sloppy programming: that's nearer to a DoS attack on my bloody server.

And because WP programmers can't be arsed to fix this, all of my customers suffer when the server goes down and I can't actually go anywhere without constantly having to check that my machine hasn't crashed?

You selfish bunch of fucking cunts.

What I just don't understand is why, after all these years, and all these documented problems, WordPress hasn't folded WP-Cache into the core. If you're ever planning to have traffic of any size on a WordPress blog, consider yourselves warned.

I'm warned. And armed. And about to spend a few hours trying to install what should be an unnecessary plugin into my hosted WP blogs.

And, by the way, I'm also really fucking annoyed...

An Irishman speaks the truth

Don't worry, Twenty, I share your frustration.

I’m tired of hearing shite from people who commit serious crimes.

Actually, I should correct that. I’m tired of hearing shite from their defence teams. How often have you turned on the radio and heard:

“Counsel for the defence accepted their client had done wrong but urged the court to take into account the background in which Mr X grew up. His father was an abusive alcoholic while his mother was a heroin addict who was regularly beaten by his father. When turning to his uncle for guidance Mr X was abused up the arse and when he told the local priest he forced him to take part in orgies with oil and other assorted toys. He then spiralled into a life of addiction and alcoholism, marrying a glue sniffing mother of four. He then abused and beat those children only because he didn’t know any better himself before spending some time in prison for battering an 81 year old pensioner in her own home so he could steal the €17 she had left of her pension so he could score drugs.

Mr X expresses deep shame and remorse at his actions but feels he has been a victim of society.”

Well fuck you and fuck you again just after you’ve been fucked. And the fucking will be done by an elephant’s cock, you poxy, despicable cunts. And that’s the just the defence counsels.

We have become a nations of excusers and enablers. When people behave badly we are dealt a litany of excuses about how tough a person’s life has been, how they suffered this or that (whether it’s true or not and I suspect a lot of the time it isn’t), how they battled this addiction or that, and the reality is that even if those things were the truth it doesn’t alter the fact that this person behaved like an utter cunt.

ZZzZzzzzz. We’ve heard it all before. Fuck excuses, fuck reasons, even the most poorly educated, junkie prick in town knows that beating/robbing/killing/stabbing etc is wrong. I don’t give a fuck about your sob stories, your namby-pamby social worker bollocks or anything else. I just want you dealt with and off the fucking streets.

I don’t give a fiddler’s what your life was like. If it was bad then you aren’t alone. There are plenty of people who suffer bad lives and childhoods who don’t behave like cunts.

Indeed. And their lives are then made considerably worse by the cunts who rob, beat, torture, rape and murder them, i.e. you cunts who are in the dock.

A legal friend of mine once told me that a lawyer would not ask their client if they were guilty of the crime or not. This is because, if a lawyer knows his client to be guilty and then defends a not guilty plea in court, that lawyer is in contempt of court.

So, can any lawyers out there tell me if the same applies to any lawyer who says that his client is basically a good person and that the judge should be lenient when the lawyer knows that his client is actually a utter fucking cunt who should be put locked up for the rest of his natural life?

Rare

Via Vindico, another of these little tests...

Your Personality is Very Rare (INTP)

Your personality type is goofy, imaginative, relaxed, and brilliant. Only about 4% of all people have your personality, including 2% of all women and 6% of all men. You are Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, and Perceiving.

How Rare Is Your Personality?

Hmmm... Goofy?

Polly is right! And then wrong (no surprises)

Bugger me, but it appears that Polly is beginning to understand, at last.

Next, why not lift personal allowances to take the low paid out of tax altogether?

Yes, a very good idea. Can it be that Polly has finally got it?

Well, yes, partially. However, she just can't resist fucking up.

It is a good idea to raise not just the youth minimum wage rate, but all of them, as they fell below inflation again this year: half of poor children are in working families, which are only poor because of low pay.

This is foolishness. There is now an excellent essay on the LPUK website about why the Minimum Wage is stupid and counterproductive.

What is rarely explained is that minimum wage laws are a prohibition, they ban most low skilled workers from getting a job, creating a situation where employers may want to employ workers, and workers may want to be employed, but the law prevents them from doing so. Supposedly, this is for their own good. It is better, they say, that they be forced from employment at the barrel of a gun and on to state benefits. To make matters worse, this dependence on benefits is often long term: because low skilled workers need to work to gain skills and experience, if they are banned from working they can't gain what they need to command higher wages. Instead of short term low paid employment, people find themselves on low income benefits long term.

One can sum it up by saying this: if the minimum wage is £5, then someone whose labour is worth less than that will never get a job. And with no job, then it is nigh on impossible to raise your human capital to a point where you will ever get a job.

Anyway, go and read the whole thing...

Happy Harriet: "Polly's a genius"

I have been meaning to mention the rather wonderful Happy Harriet Harman blog for a while now. It is a spoof blog, naturally, but does it rather well. Needless to say, nothing that a spoof says should be taken at face value.

In a thousand years, the people of the future (or possibly aliens depending on how this climate change thing plays out) will look at the early 21st century and recognise that Polly Toynbee was one of the cleverest and most loved people around*.

i.e. Polly is a pusillanimous idiot with all of the talent of a badly-mangled melon.

Oh, and you want to know what the asterisk denotes?

*In fact, Polly has many admirers, not least of all a certain Tim Worstall who manages to blog about her at least once a day in between the rest of his anti-woman commentary, the pig! It is an open secret in the blogosphere that Tim (who is not very brght) is madly in love with clever Polly but unfortunately his hatred of all that is female causes his love to manifest in a deranged and twisted form.

Excellent! Duly added to the RSS feeds...

UPDATE: it is definitely not a spoof blog, OK?

For goodness sake, I'll say it once and once only....

THIS IS NOT A SPOOF BLOG!

It's what I like to call a complimentary blog. To complement my official one which is really boring, but which for legal reasons has to stay quite dull.

Well, that last sentence is certainly true...

Why The Grauniad is shit #1,908,787

Via Timmy, here's yet another example of why The Grauniad is a total piece of shit paper which should not be read by anyone with any self-respect (unless it's for the purpose of illustrating precisely how shit it is, he said quickly).

Higher prices may sometimes be justified, but a conspiracy of producers against the public is always the wrong way to bring them about.

Can we just emphasise that point: "... a conspiracy of producers against the public is always the wrong way...".

So, in a paper that wasn't a load of shit—wherein the columnists often contradict themselves within the same article, let alone from day to day—that would be the end of the piece. but, o no, not in The Groan.

In a report on alcohol last month, the home office proposed changing the law so supermarkets are no longer forced to respond to cut-throat competition by selling cut-price liquor. The idea of imposing competition with an eye on the wider public interest could have more general application. Regulators guard their independence jealously, but they need the freedom to apply it more flexibly, because there are times when lower prices come at a high cost.

As Timmy says...

Eh? So with the justification of higher prices being needed you’ll agree to a conspiracy of producers against the public?

What a bunch of fuckwit cunts they are at The Groan. No wonder Polly feels so at home there (and is it just me, or does this leader not carry some hallmarks of Toynbee's writing style?)...

Archbishop calls for Communism

Rowan Williams is not merely a bumbling fool but, it seems, a deeply unpleasant man. Let us remind ourselves of his record over the last year or so, shall we?

In January 2007, one of his speeches could be—as was, by your humble Devil—summed up thusly.

The shorter Dr Rowan Williams: "The terrorists of 9/11 had no other option but to fly planes into the World Trade Centre killing over 3,000 innocent people and those people weren't innocent anyway because they were involved in trade and every time anyone trades anywhere it is, in fact, an act of violence."

Fucking hell, it seems that the Church of England is being led by someone who is not just naive, but actively evil. I can barely disguise my contempt for this little shit...

Then, in January 2008, Rowan Williams won your humble Devil's Unspeakable Cunt of the Day award for his attack on free speech.

Wales also produced today's Spectacularly Unspeakable Cunt Of The Day.

In the James Callaghan Memorial lecture, Dr Williams challenged the argument that free speech must always prevail, saying that society had to protect the sensibilities of people who were not in a position to defend themselves.
...

...

The only good thing about Dr Rowan Williams is that, being a Christian, once I've stabbed him in one side of his face, he has to turn the other cheek so I can easily pierce the other side of his smug, hairy twat-face.

And then we can start calling him "Kit" Williams. As in "assembly kit". As in one lamp-post; one length of rope; one illiberal, Welsh, Archbishop of Canterbury: some assembly required.

In February 2008, the bearded clam then called for people in Britain to be able to decide whether they would like to be subject to British law or shari'a.

I would like to echo my colleague's assessment of Rowan Williams's latest piece of crap—why can't this man shut his fucking face?

The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams says the adoption of Islamic Sharia law in the UK is "unavoidable".

The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams is an utter arsehole who should be strung up by a meathook through his scrotum.
...

You, Williams, are a fuckwit and a dangerous fuckwit at that. Oh, who will rid me of this turbulent priest?

[Waits expectantly for four knights to go and murder the bastard.]

Yes, yes, I know I'm not a king but throw me a frickin' bone here*...


* Preferably one of Rowan Williams's.

Ladies and gentlemen, how can the hairy (corn)flakey bastard possibly top this litany of evil, stupidity and ignorance? By supporting communist policies, of course!

In a pessimistic analysis of modern British life and the economy Gordon Brown has overseen for a decade, Rowan Williams said the Government should impose tougher rules on lenders and demanded action to close the wealth gap between rich and poor.

Go fuck yourself, Williams. Seriously.

Dr Williams warned that an "economy built on spiralling, more or less uncontrolled, credit" is leading to "the erosion of family life and the erosion of self-confidence" for many people.

Oh, really? I'd blame it on authoritarian wankers like Williams and the bastard sodding state, myself.

Christian charities working with the poor have found that as many as one in three of their clients are being driven to consider suicide as they struggle to pay off debts, he told the House of Lords.

You know what? Tough. They voluntarily took on these debts; no one forced them to live beyond their means. No, not even advertising did that. These people are solely responsible for their indebtedness.

And if Christian charities are helping them, well, excellent; that is what charities should exist for—voluntarily helping those in need.

Young people in particular, he said, are under greater pressure, often becoming burdened by "crippling" levels of debt because inadequate financial education leaves them unable to understand the consequences of the loans they take out.

Really? You take out a loan; if you cannot make repayments, then there will be consequences. The loans are based on an interest rate which, in many cases, can fluctuate. You can choose to take out this loan but it automatically means that you are living beyond your means.

There, that's financial education for all of my readers: it wasn't difficult, was it? Oh, and by the by, if the state education system in this country is a massive load of old shit, whose fault is that, precisely?

Significantly, the Archbishop said the introduction of student loans has intensified the problem, helping persuade many young people that large debts are routine and normal.

Oh, well, such is life. One would have thought—from the number of students and ex-students that I know who bitch and moan about the size of their student loan—that "young people" would be extraordinarily keen not to take on yet more debts, wouldn't one?

Amid the global credit crunch, mainstream lenders are increasing wary of lending to people on low incomes, meaning they are forced to rely on specialist loan companies that charge higher rates.

Dr Williams said he was "bothered" by such lenders profiting from charging high rates to the poorest members of society, and called for stronger regulation, and possibly even a legal cap on interest rates.

Look, Williams, you dumb bastard, rates to those most likely to default are always going to be higher. If a reputable lender will not let you borrow money, I would say that it is a message that you shouldn't borrow it. And certainly not from someone who is going to charge you huge amounts of interest precisely because you are a bad risk (and who might break your legs if you default).

The huge salaries and bonuses enjoyed by many bankers and financiers are breeding "envy and cynicism" and leaving less well-off people "alienated from society," Dr Williams said.

"There may be an element of 'I would like some of that' but there is also an element of 'What kind of society is this? How can I trust the system when it rewards some people so disproportionately in a way that doesn't connect at all with where I am?'" he said, The answer, he said, could be the "regulation of high salaries".

Could it now? So, we should legislate to cap the maximum salary, should we? My goodness, Archbishop, how very Communist of you. Seriously, matey, go fuck yourself. Without lube.

Who deems what is a reasonable salary level, Williams? You? And shall we regulate for every job or just those that you don't like? Fuck, but you are a loathesome individual.

Alan Duncan, the Conservative business spokesman, yesterday backed the Archbishop's call. "Too few politicians have appreciated the plight of poorer people trapped in debt," he said.

You fucking what?

Harry Haddock sums up the Archbishop's latest car-crash speech quite nicely.

Not content with demanding an end to free speech, the Archbishop now believes that the Church should tell us how to run the economy, what is acceptable wealth, and various other statist rubbish.

I can’t be arsed to fisk the article ~ some of it is stupid, airy fairy left wing nonsense, some of it (for instance the call for regulation of salaries) is borderline communist, but it strengthens the call for disestablishment of the Church. And then preferably Williams’ head from his body.

Amen to that.

UPDATE: I like this aside, from Finding The Bomb...

I've always found it funny that the guy who supposedly represents the Anglican church has the eyebrows of the fucking devil.

Heh...

A load of junk

Nigel Griffiths MP: a deeply unpleasant, authoritarian cunt. May he rot in hell and may people piss on his grave.

It seems that MPs have actually resisted the urge to bansturbation over "junk" food advertising.

A bill calling for a ban on advertising junk food and drinks to children has been blocked by opposition MPs.

It's been blocked by opposition MPs? Um, the government has an overall majority in Parliament: if they wanted this to go through, then they could easily have ensured that.

The Food Products (Marketing to Children) Bill aimed to make it an offence to promote "less healthy" foodstuffs to children.

Introduced by Labour MP Nigel Griffiths last year, it also wanted a 9pm watershed introduced for television advertising of unhealthy food.

Mr Griffiths is a bansturbating cunt and I hope that he dies of something both painful and embarrassing, the fucking totalitarian sack of shit.

Mr Griffiths said tougher restrictions would help counter "pester power" from children for parents to buy less healthy food.

"Massive funding to advertise and promote junk foods - £800m a year - is undermining the efforts of parents to control the food and sugary drinks that children take, " he said.

Really? What the fuck? Advertising has been around for as long as trade has, i.e. for almost the entirety of human history; where has this idea that advertising is akin to brain-washing come from? Have we, as a species, become less sophisticated and more susceptible over time? If so, it's a poor look-out for the human race.

Actually, of course, nothing of the sort has happened: it is simply that we have become lazier and less able to accept the consequences of our own actions. The proper approach is that advocated by Harry Haddock.

Look, its quite simple. ‘Pester power’ can be defeated with a tiny, two letter device, known as ‘no’.

‘can I have some sweets?’

‘no’

‘please?’

‘no’

‘whaaaaaaaaaaaaa (etc etc)

‘no’ (repeat until strange wailing noise stops).

See? Simple. Either that, or give them a good beating.

Unfortunately, the Welfare State has infantilised the entire population and that means that the parents are also like children; like children refusing to do their homework or clean their room, the parents shy away from doing what is necessary and good because it is vaguely difficult or unpleasant.

Denying your children their every whim is unpleasant because they will bitch and moan for a while; but, in the long run, it will be far more beneficial to them. Seriously.

Naturally, there is some special interest group involved here.

However, some observers were disappointed that the bill failed to pass through the second reading.

Ruairi O'Connor of the British Heart Foundation said: "Junk food companies have been given a last shot to prove they can put the interests of children first, and take the issue of childhood obesity seriously, before the government will surely be forced to regulate."

"Parents are tired of fighting the influence of cartoon superheroes and TV advertising in the supermarket aisles," he added.

Well, you, Ruiri, should shut your fucking face. Bringing up children is not an easy option and nor should it be seen so; as a result, parents are going to get tired. Tough. It was their choice to have a child.

And, of course, like every other time that you see a "charity" standing up for yet more government legislation, they are funded by the government: in 2007 (the last year for which BHF accounts are available [PDF]) the British Heart Foundation was funded to the tune of nearly £10 million.


I am getting heartily sick of hearing these fucking "charities" backing yet more bansturbating, looking up their accounts and finding that they are, to a large degree, government-funded. These aren't charities—charity involves voluntary giving—they are effectively state-serving fucking QUANGOs. They are paid to toe the government's line of all things: they have been corrupted, just like every other "public" agency.

Nigel Griffiths: fuck off.

British Heart Foundation: fuck right off.

MPs who voted against this Bill: you've done something good for once. How does it feel? Rather novel, I'd imagine...

Public servants

In reply to a comment on this post about the police, your humble Devil has just left this comment. [Edited for relevance.]

I am also aware that many policemen—I am prepared to believe that it is the vast majority, in fact—are decent people trying to do a good job in difficult circumstances.

However, many of your leaders are authoritarian cunts who—if they aren't actively lobbying the government for more powers—are busy over-enthusiastically enforcing some of the ones that they already have. And most people's perception is that those laws that they are enforcing are not the important ones.

The police have lost the support of the people: they are now seen as agents of the state, not the upholders of the law and protectors of the citizens that Robert Peel urged them to be.

Whether or not this perception is true is irrelevant: the fact that I can write something like the above and have the vast majority agree with me shows that the police have failed in their duty.

I post this because it is also relevant to this post and Martin's excellent post, about the teaching profession. Indeed, the general aura of the comment applies to all so-called public servants: the police, firemen, teachers, doctors, nurses and civil servants.

All of the above professions used to be known as public servants and the public were willing to support those working in these areas because they believed that these people were exactly that: servants, working for the benefit of society as a whole.

Whether this perception was strictly true in terms of outcomes is, at this point, irrelevant: it is the attitude of those who pay the wages of these professions that is important. Because part of the problem—and it is manifest in the distinct draining away of support for teachers, policemen, etc. in recent decades—is that there is a distinct attitude amongst the public that these are no longer public servants, but state servants.

And these state servants constantly moan and whine about how their jobs are being made worse by government; how they are unable to protect the people, or teach the children, or cure the sick, because of government regulations. But many of the representative bodies of these professions are actively lobbying for more powers over those that they should serve—longer detention without charge, more bans on alcohol and cigarettes, etc.—and the only time that they stand up and make a fuss is when they are hit in the pocket.

Well fuck the lot of you: we, the people, are no longer prepared to prop up your financial ambitions. And this is because you no longer do the jobs that you should; we, the taxpayers, who are your ultimate employers, no onger believe that we are getting value for money. We would like to sack you all and start again—for the whole system is rotten—and we are certainly not minded to support your bid for massive amounts of money when we ourselves are struggling.

All of this, of course, has happened because it is painfully obvious that the state is no longer the servant of the people, or even the protector of their rights. I delibertaely did not include MPs in the list of public servants because they are, to an extent, the source of the problem, the evil cunts. We all know that they are the scum of the earth—power-hungry, vain, ugly-souled, selfish, vicious, dishonest, venal, lying, cunting sacks of shit—so it hardly seems worth pointing out that they lost the support of the citizenry many, many years ago.

The state is now the enslaver of the citizens, the authoritarian destroyer of ancient freedoms and, in any case, only ever the official servants of 21.6% of the electorate.

This won't change under the Tories either, a party that may or may not lower taxes but is highly unlikely to be any more socially liberal than NuLabour. We have little choice: would you like sanctimonious left-wing authoritarianism or sanctimonious right-wing authoritarianism? What a poor excuse for a country we have become.

Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.

Believe me, I do.

The Teachers Strike (Again)

Further to His Satanic Majesty's post of yesterday on the subject of the teachers' strike, unfortunately one cannot resist adding a tuppenceworth.

Yesterday evening, while watching the Channel 4 News, my eyes were assailed by the sight of a fat old bearded clown posing as a teacher who I wouldn't want in front of my child until they had been de-loused, and a woman whinging about how she can't afford to buy a house. They were also assailed by a fat man called 'Bunting' mouthfarting about 'teaching' and by the sight of the 'Acting General Secretary' of the NUT, a pale female ideologue of a certain age with the kind of eyes one would expect to belong the Commissar of SMERSH.

The teaching professions in the United Kingdom are quite clearly an Augean Stables in serious need of a hosedown. They want their 4%, fine - this is the trade-off.

An end to the final salary pension scheme.

An end to the early retirement offers.

An end to the extended holidays - they can take 28 days and the statutories like everyone else, and use the time when the pupils are absent to refresh their memories about what it is they're actually supposed to be teaching.

Very much more fluid employment arrangements- if you're crap, you're out, same as in every other job.

The imposition of a no-strike policy.

And the introduction of personal liability for poor exam performance. You want to be paid like doctors and lawyers, fine - but you suffer the stresses that doctors and lawyers must work under. If you're incompetent, you should be capable of being sued as a result.

Teachers are overpaid for what they do. They have a cushy wee number, they enjoy better terms than virtually every other employment in the land and those engaged in it don't seem to realise it. The government, any government, should send out this very simple message to the teaching profession - shut up and get on with your work.

Stupid comment of the day...

... is on Iain Dale's piece over at—you guessed it—Comment Is Superfluous Free, and comes from someone called Danot.

I think it's sweet that there are tories around who think that they one day might get back into government, the triumph of hope over reality. They just don't grasp the fact that "hug a hoodie Cameron" has about as much chance of becoming prime minister as Pete Doherty has of getting a mention in the honours list this year. Much the same goes for his Old Etonian colleagues in the shadow cabinet.

People are tired of Gordon Brown yes, primarily because of his association with Blair and sucking up to the US. So he'll have to go, to be replaced with a new labour PM. Keep dreaming though.

That's right Danot; the Labour Party are definitely going to be in power in perpetuity. Come to think of it, why don't they just abolish all other political parties?

After all, if Labour are going to remain in government for ever, making all other political parties illegal is the sensible thing to do: it will save an awful lot of effort by those parties and it will mean that NuLabour can concentrate on making the poor poorer richer, decreasing increasing social mobility, creating a database state protecting our way of life against terrorism, removing safeguarding our ancient liberties, utterly failing on educating our children, buggering up improving the NHS, creating valueless, expensive and superfluous public sector jobs, screwing growing the economy and increasing tractor production to record levels.

Danot wins the Evil Wanker Loyal Servant of the NuLabour State of the Day Award too.

THIS POST HAS BEEN EDITED BY THE NULABOUR MINISTRY OF TRUTH. ALL HAIL BIG BROTHER BROWN: MAY HIS REIGN NEVER END.

WAR IS PEACE.
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH*.

* As our beloved leader shows us day after glorious day.

Teachers' strike

Oh look! Another bunch of useless state employees are on strike. What a fucking surprise.

About a third of schools in England and Wales have been disrupted by the first national teachers' strike in 21 years.

The walkout by thousands of teachers has closed or partially closed up to 8,000 schools, forcing working parents to stay at home or find childcare.

And the children will actually have learned more today than they would otherwise do...

The National Union of Teachers (NUT) is staging more than 50 rallies, as members demand a 4.1% pay rise rather than the 2.45% on offer.

Look, you silly cunts, you aren't going to get 4.1% because there is nothing in the coffers. Quite apart from that, given the lack of educational attainment by state-school children, the simple fact is that you do not deserve any kind of pay rise.

If we had a voucher system, of course, this kind of shit wouldn't happen. And we shouldn't have a national fucking pay deal anyway.

Gordon Brown has described the strike as "unfortunate and regrettable".

Thank you. This has been stock reponse #832/08.

I am just wearied by these bastards...

Current listening...

Via ChickenYoghurt, I am currently listening to The Age Of The Understatement, by The Last Shadow Puppets (comprising Alex Turner of Arctic Monkeys and Miles Kane of The Rascals), and rather enjoying it. So, here's a live version, which has a certain manic energy, of the title track...


The production on the album is much fuller, with lots of soaring strings, etc. Definitely worth a listen...

Keeping the torch burning

A number of people seem to have got extremely excited about the recent shenanigans surrounding the procession of the Olympic Torch through London. I haven't heard many people threatening not to buy Chinese goods, mind you; a fact that underlines the irrelevance of the Olympics: people can happily protest against them without any cost to themselves.

Having said that, the presence of numerous blue-suited Chinese security personnel does seem to have added an unusually sinister aspect to the proceedings. Amusingly, they have provided the perfect opportunity to expose Red Ken as a lying bastard, as Londonist reports.

Well, a Metropolitan police authority report has revealed that said security presence cost a whopping £750,000. And while it’s not Londonist’s style to bluster about taxpayer’s money and wotnot, according to Lib Dem mayoral candidate Brian Paddick, the very same Chinese torch escorts that Ken Livingstone chided as "thugs" and denied association with afterwards, were actually authorised as part of a Greater London Authority agreement with Chinese officials.

Paddick said:

The MPA report makes it quite clear, in direct contradiction to what Livingstone has told us, that the Chinese security guards were part of the legal contract between the GLA and the Chinese authorities.

For the Mayor to say he knew nothing about it—and would not have allowed it—is simply not true.

Whilst "politician lies like a lying fucking bastard" is hardly the most surprising news in the world, it is good to see Red Ken's untruths so neatly laid out.

Oh, and £750,000 for all of the police—will we just be adding that to the cost of 2012, or what?