More on the EU blogger code.

Not surprisingly, this has attracted more than a little scorn from a few people.

But let us remind ourselves:

whereas weblogs are an increasingly common medium for self-expression by media professionals as well as private persons, the status of their authors and publishers, including their legal status, is neither determined nor made clear to the readers of the weblogs, causing uncertainties regarding impartiality, reliability, source protection, applicability of ethical codes and the assignment of liability in the event of lawsuits,

Okay, I'll try:

• I suppose I am a private person - an interestingly undefined term - I am certainly not a public figure.
• Hang on, I have appeared on TV a couple of times, I have given evidence to Parliamentary committees, I have been interviewed by mainstream media. Am I a 'private person' still?
  
• Oh, no, actually, I am a 'media professional' - I do get paid (occasionally and generally late) for writing articles.
• But it isn't my main source of income (not really even pin money).
• But my blog does occasionally cover information security, which is what I write professionally about.
• But I am not a member of the NUJ nor have I registered myself with the government as a blogger.
• I am not impartial, clearly, but then neither are MSM journalists.
• Source protection? In the USA this might have some legal standing, maybe, but not in the EU!

So, clear as mud then! Statist cunts.

They call on the Celts: "Rise Up and Vote Labour!"

Annabel Goldie and her merry band of inadequates are under attack from all sides. From Labour for voting for the Government (SNP) budget and from the SNP for claiming some credit for supporting the popular work for what used to be the Scottish Executive.

The latter is reasonable if somewhat cheeky (Ed notes: sorry, pay for link). The Tories had no part in the SNP manifesto and the main policy of the SNP remains independence for Scotland - this is opposed (although hardly the main policy) of the Tories. However, in a minority administration, it is the role of the smaller parties or blocs to support those bits of the main work of the government they do not fundamentally disagree with, in return for government support for bits of their manifesto or more recent commitments. This is politics as normal - somewhat different from the craven submission of the Lib-Dems to the previous nu-Lab brawl.

However, why the attacks from the Labour?

Labour, never mind reeling from the blast at Crewe, can do electoral maths. If they wish to keep their rotting pseudopods on power at Westminster, they need MPs from the Celtic fringe. The threat here isn't really the Tories (although they are doing much, much better) - it is the Nationalists and, especially, in Scotland where wee Alec has not made fools of himself or his team (unlike Wendy, and her uncertain relationship with the GCF). If the SNP can convince the red-rosette sheeple that they have successfully run those parts of Scotland they control, then Labour could be wiped out as a force in Scottish politics. There are Tories here - anti-European, governmental minimalists, social conservatives, economically prudent - there are (what call themselves but aren't) Liberals under rocks everywhere - pro-Europe, bansturbationary, a paler shade of green; but the fight for the heartland, the socialist and wedded-to-it (as well as paid by it) vote is between the SNP and the peculiarly Lanarkshire flavour of nu-Labour.

Just look at the venom put out by those epitomes of Jock-Lab bloggery, the Kellys - attack, after attack, on the SNP (and Kezia is, although obviously less grotesquely obnoxious, really^* not much better!) Whether this is organised (or just encouraged) corporately, it is clear that Scottish Labour are running scared. Really scared of being cornered into irrelevance by a properly left-wing, competent and populist SNP, with no monocular cretin in Number 10 to drag them down.

It may well be fun to watch, in a rather sick way, from a libertarian and unionist distance.

* At time of writing, she has 6 posts on her front page - one is pro-Obama, one is pro-choice, the other four are, or contain, attacks on the SNP.

Regionalised Aid

Martin Jacques (h/t Mr E), writing on "Cretinous & Feeble", has produced considerable dissent with his "Hands Off Independent Myanmar, You Evil Imperialist Swine" diatribe. Not surprisingly, given his communist politics and work profile, he hasn't exactly made many friends.

More surprisingly, once you dig under the "I hate the West, the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, and all it stands for¹" nonsense, there are actually some limited but valid points there.

I believe that aid should, where possible, be provided from within the local region. Immediately neighbouring countries may not be entirely practical - regional enmities may make a wider focus more appealing but, as Martin states, there is ASEAN². There are clear advantages with local culture, local food (remember American maize flour, from yellow maize, being rejected in Africa because it was so different from the local white maize - never mind US rejection of British emergency rations in the aftermath of Katrina, due to BSE concerns³ and, to localise it - the inappropriateness of possibly meat-based European rations in a largely Buddhist community) or merely not being white (let's be honest, the colonial record, whether we are British, Spanish, French, American or, especially, Belgian, is quite reasonably held against us in many parts of the world.)

He, among others, also has a point regarding the "invade and distribute" idiots. Burma is a military dictatorship - their Army may not be doing much on the disaster relief front but they seem to be doing a reasonable job at catching journalists and, I'm sure, could make any invasion quite a difficult proposition. And, given the success we are having at 'Military Aid to the Civil Power' in Iraq and Afghanistan (as opposed to simple military success against conventional or near-conventional opposition), recent history suggests that we would make such a great job of it.

Except, there is one important factor, for local aid to work, the local organisations or countries need to be able to provide it. Often, although it wasn't too bad in the specific case of Burma and Cyclone Nargis, they have suffered from the same disaster as the poster-child country. Very often, they also are poor and need the food, equipment and skilled people for their own projects and issues. And when they can deploy, they don't come up to standard. African (OAS) troops for African conflicts hasn't worked well. Third World troops on UN deployments have done the remarkable and worsened the reputation of the light blue beret / helmet.

The ICRC was founded in Geneva, Oxfam in Oxford, Médecins Sans Frontières in France. Aid, at the moment, means either the UN or the West. And the UN has all the problems of any large bureaucracy. The people of Burma need aid. The West should and should be both allowed and encouraged to provide it. And if that offends a Burmese General or two? Fuck them with a schiltron full of 15 foot pikes (either the not-quite-a-spear or the fish, I don't care!)


1. Except Marx and Stalin, of course, and, even then Mao and 'Brother No 1' did it better.

2. Go on, why .org? This sort of organisation is exactly what the .int domain is for. And it's even free!

3. Not fit for starving Yanks, therefore foisted on to the developing world - the mind-boggling (lack of) ethics of aid!

1 Down, 350 to Go.*

I suspect there will be an awful lot of very nervous Nu-Lab politicians conspiring over their lattes this morning. This was a result entirely deserved by the Great Clunking Fist and his troupe of barely-trained media baboons. Unfortunately, we are unlikely to see the 17.6% swing reflected in a General Election but this is giving formal notice that the normal people of the UK are now completely sick of them, their spin, their taxes and their horridly statist mismanagement of this country, its economy and our freedom.

The Tories threw it away in 1997, by in-fighting, corruption and the arrogance of being in office for so long. Gordon is throwing it away now because that is all he is capable of doing.

What a lovely morning!

* And, it should go without saying, all 78 UK MEPs (or the 72 we'll have to appoint to their sinecure next time round.)

Grovelling Apology

In recompense for my recent appalling behaviour on Our Hero's blog, as chronicled on TerryWatch, may I direct you to a beautifully civilised rant in today's Torygraph, by Andrew Roberts on the egregious Vera Baird:

It is also worth contemplating Mrs Baird's typical New Labour arrogance in dismissing the Royal Family for not already being part of "the human race".

She obviously considers herself to be a functioning member of it, despite having been a lawyer for 33 years and a Labour MP for seven, two professions that the public regards as about as cut off from reality as it is possible to be in modern Britain.

I would be prepared to wager that every single member of the Royal Family in receipt of the Civil List - even those in their eighties - has in the past year visited more hospitals, met more ordinary people, travelled the country more and generally proved their membership of the human race far better than Mrs Vera Baird QC, MP.

The point about the Kaiser, as well as many others, is also beautifully made. My day would have seemed less damp if I had got to page 21 at breakfast rather than before bed.

For the Want of a Nail

It seems that the downfall of Lee Jasper, the world guru of PC and yet another example of the encouraging truism that the only qualification for seeking political office (even his pre-fall un-elected status) in London is excessive and extra-marital shagging, was brought about by one of the axiomatic failures of personal information security - the password on the post-it note.

If you had wondered how the Evening Standard got hold of the emails, the answer is in today's Indefensible.

Bigwigs at City Hall, paranoid about the leak that led to Jasper's messages reaching the journalist Andrew Gilligan, held an inquiry to find the culprit. The police would have been called had illegal hacking activity been unearthed. The inquiry was short. It soon established that Jasper kept his email log-in password on a Post-it note near his computer, so a temp could check his mail.

More fool him.

Economic Ignoramus

Well, Scotland's senior MEP (apparently^*) is a moron. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mr David Martin in today's Scotsman:

Market forces are the best way to stop cruelty of seal clubbing.

Heh? How is that ignorant or moronic? Sounds perfectly reasonable does it - liberal even? Nobody wants to buy the goods and there is no reason to prepare or sell seal-based products. (Ed notes: of course, it doesn't mean there is no reason to cull the seals - maintaining fish stocks pops up as just one reason - the best part of 1/4 million additional seals each year would eat quite a lot over their lifetimes.)

Ah, no. You see it's this bit - "Market forces". His idea of a 'market force' is an EU-wide ban.

Indeed, if Europe was to no longer permit producers of seal products to trade within our borders

Statist cunt.

Just for the record, my dress sporran is chinchilla, not the more common seal-skin, my day sporran is plain leather (probably cow-hide).


* - Is "senior MEP in the European Parliament" a simple tautology, or is he making a subtle point about the commitment of our elected reprehensibles in Brussels? The former, you say? I thought stupidity was the most likely answer.

Populist Fool or Statist Cunt?

The question is being asked of Kenny MacAskill today, who has demanded that the UK government, in the form of Ruth Kelly, never a body corporate nor a person slow to shit all over the liberties of us mere peons, reduce the legal blood alcohol level for drivers from 80mg/100ml^* to 50.

It has to be said that this is not a new SNP policy - so they are, at least, consistent in their shit-headery.

"What's your problem?" you may be asking. Do I really want more deaths on the road? After all:

Drink driving remains a constant thorn in the side of efforts to make our roads and communities safer. The fact that 1 in 9 road deaths in Scotland were alcohol-related shows we need to do more.

Aaaargh. You utter fucking imbecile. If you want to educate people that drink driving is bad, then educate them - you're in charge of the entire Scottish education system for fuck's sake. You have an enormous PR and media budget. Prioritise the spend. But no, you are trying to change the law. You need (well, okay, you don't, you should have) a reason. A simple change of question for you.

It is not "How many road deaths are alcohol-related?", it is "How many deaths were attributable to the legal alcohol limit being 0.8g/l not 0.5g/l?"

Just one hint. Don't believe the BMA's figure of 65 UK-wide. They, just like our politicians, are another bunch of "Do as we say, not as we do", hypocrites.

* Science pedant here - what, exactly, is wrong with properly labelling this 0.8g/l? Maybe because that seems really small? Cunts.

That 'Crosby Report'

So Sir James Crosby, ex-head of HBOS and now quango-ing it up as Deputy Chairman of the FSA, has finally published the report into "Challenges and opportunities in identity assurance". He had been appointed by the monocular control freak in July 2006 to lead the "Public Private Forum on Identity Management", some four months after the detailed legislation for the National ID Card and National Identity Register was enacted. So, actually, it is pretty pointless.

In law, we already know what is going to be in the Register, we know how, if not exactly what, we are going to be forced to fund this statist atrocity? So why a detailed report now and why did it take 21 months to produce? I'm sure Sir James isn't saying.

But despite all the time it has taken to produce this, there are a number of problems.  Firstly, it doesn't describe the UK ID Card and Register.  Sir James is describing a system that is free (or, at least, cheap) - para 5.38, efficient - para 5.4, and allows for the inevitable failures - paras 4.7 & 5.37.  Most of all, it stores just the data necessary for the validation of ID - summary and paras 5.20 & 5.21.

He also makes a couple of mistakes - an over-reliance on the capabilities of biometrics in para 1.17 (although para 1.19 does show some, albeit insufficient, scepticism) and a general ignoring of the 'birthday attack', particularly in para 1.18.  Although he is technically correct, the approach in para 1.26 and Ch1, footnote 1 is unfortunate for its stress - it skirts the core issue that the assurance system will not have independent failure rates - they will rely on the same ID Card enrolment, issuance and validation system, for a start.

He doesn't mention terrorism - although 'national security' does get a couple of plugs, and 'border control' is mentioned.

Heathrow currently takes about 160,000 passengers per day.  If you have a 1 in a million false-identification rate (which causes you to be arrested) and a 1 in 250,000 system failure rate (which causes a significant delay or being denied boarding) and there are 20 known terrorists per year going through the airport, 68 people will be falsely arrested, system errors in 271 cases will cause significant delays and no terrorists will be caught.  Why?  Because the terrorists will have correctly (if illegally) issued ID cards for completely 'innocent' identities.

Bollocks on the News, Part I

So, there I am harmlessly slowly waking up and the unattractive figure of Jacqui Smith appears on the television.  We know that she shines an inefficient and low-wattage light even amongst the dim bulbs that are the current Cabinet but she was appalling this morning.  On ID Cards, of course.

So we are starting with compulsory issue - first to evil furriners (except EU furriners who, according to the Brussels collective, cannot be evil), then to airport workers, students (who, as we all know are smelly wasters, spending all their time drinking at the Union while skipping lectures) in 2010 and finally, once we have been immunised against it, all of us when we go and get our passports from 2011.  She did try to say that the latter two would be voluntary but, as it is the register not the card that is important, I don't believe here.  And nobody, not even airport workers, will need to carry it.

Unless, and I was taking notes by this point, you want to:

• Travel
• Get a bank account
• Get a loan
• Prove who we are to the police (Wat is going to be in real trouble)
• or buy property

And it will protect us against fraud.  Will it?  Only if we have checks against the NIR, using the biometric data on our ID cards, at every opportunity to commit fraud¹. Which is a problem, because every time our identity is checked against the NIR, the circumstances of that check will ne recorded on the NIR. This is going to make the NIR much larger and much, much busier, therefore, almost axiomatically, much more likely to contain incorrect information and much more likely to fall over.

And the vaunted biometrics, in a different database to the NIR² you know, is now just a digitised photograph and your fingerprints.  Ho, hum.   That will prevent terrorism, I know, Jacqui said so.

Not so - let's take an example.  The completely hypothetical Abdul al Innocent comes to the UK to go to University³. After 4 years of exposure to pictures of Jade Goody, walking around piles of chav vomit / vomiting chavs, and encouraged by sermons from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Abdul decides that Britain is doomed unless we are brought under Sharia law. He goes home to get a job (having entered as a student, he has difficulty converting his visa to a work one and he is law-abiding and not going to go on the run.)

Once home, he meets up with some radical Islamists after Friday prayers and he is, over a period of a few months, convinced by them that the best way to convince us of the right(eous)ness of Sharia law is a series of terrorist atrocities⁴. So, he applies for a work visa which is granted⁵. And he comes to the UK. He has, of course, already got an ID card and an entry on the NIR. His controllers provide him with a forged or fraudulent passport, let's make it French, for Jean le Terroriste. All of his dodgy activity; training, meeting with fellow activists, purchasing parts for his explosive waistcoat, are done by Jean - and on Jean's ID Card and recorded on Jean's NIR record. Before the final terrorist activity, Jean's ID card is shredded and the earnestly innocent Abdul goes to meet his raisins.  Game set match - all sorts of things could have caught Abdul but not ID Cards.

1. And as the banks found out with Chip & Pin, all that will do is drive the commission of fraud abroad.

2. Yes, the biometrics shouldn't be on any database, they only need to be on the card. But that would be the sensible way of doing things.

3. Why, I am not entirely sure. Even if Abdul was from a country we or the Yanks had bombed back to the Stone Age, he is likely to get a much better education, even in the English language, anywhere but here.

4. Adbul is not too bright. Let's say he was a "David Beckham Studies" graduate.

5. I did imagine a lot in here about his arrest under Section 132 of SOCPA and subsequent brutalisation at the hands of a militant lesbian Met Police Officer "because he looked at me funny, m'lud." But it was irrelevant so I left it out.

Iraqi Employees: Fine words, shabby deeds!

Actually, I am not as politic as the estimable Mr Hardie. I don't think the words have been that fine. I think they have been grudging, late and weasely. I think that the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence have behaved appallingly and that Dan actually got it right here:

Only pressure will stop this Government from finding bureaucratic excuses to abandon its moral obligations and leave its former Employees to the death squads.

Still, the latest in the saga is up here and or on what I am pleased to learn is "the right-wing neo-con supporting Harry's Place website" here.

Do you like reading fine words? Here is the Prime Minister on the subject of Iraqi ex-employees of the British Government, speaking in the House of Commons on October 9th, 2007: ‘I would also like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work of our civilian and locally employed staff in Iraq, many of whom have worked in extremely difficult circumstances, exposing themselves and their families to danger. I am pleased therefore to announce today a new policy which more fully recognises the contribution made by our local Iraqi staff, who work for our armed forces and civilian missions in what we know are uniquely difficult circumstances.’

Fine words. What about deeds?

A small number of Iraqis - fewer than a dozen, according to people close to the operation who are in contact with me- were removed from Iraq in the early autumn of 2007. Since the Prime Minister’s admirable declaration of October, how many Iraqi ex-employees have been evacuated from Iraq? According to all the Iraqis that I am in contact with: none.

...

The Home Office is dawdling while people are threatened with death.This is either incompetence in the face of a crisis, or it is a deliberate policy of putting bureaucratic obstacles in the face of fugitives. Neither is acceptable.

Please read the whole thing and do what your conscience tells you.

Proud to be one of " Neil Clark's 'Quislings' ".

Oh Dear, Gail

Mrs Sheridan appears to have been suspended from her job for being in the possession of (allegedly) and potentially purloining some airline miniature booze^*, to add to her perjury charge woes.

Well, what would you expect? She is, without question, a good Socialist and "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need", is a damn good Socialist principle. British Airways has plenty of miniatures and, if I were married to Tommy, current troubles especially, I'd sodding well need a stiff drink.

As all reasonable people will be automatically aware, this is, of course, a Thatcherite plot using the vicious Nu-Lab police to derail the paths both of the people's revolution and of true (according to good Marxist dogma) love.

* Just to declare an interest, I think I have a couple of BA Gordon's miniatures in my drinks cabinet - just for emergency gin famines, of course. And obtained as a passenger, rather than as an employee.

Excellent Work

Manic, aka Tim Ireland, who runs Bloggerheads, is of not entirely subtly^* different politics than this author. But he is passionately concerned about the appalling infringements of their responsibilities and our liberties that the current bunch of egregious statists have inflicted.

Here is his well-thought and superbly presented take on the current pretence consultation regarding the law about demonstrating near Parliament, as enacted in Sections 132-138 of the Serious and Organised Crime and Police Act, 2005.



Absolutely brilliant.

* Well, he is Australian, what can we expect?

As Bad As Each Other?

Well, as the Hain fiasco rumbles on, Wendy Alexander seems to be all but forgotten, Dizzy and Guido seem to have found issues with the funding of Monocular of Kirkcaldy, himself, The Mail on Sunday blats out "Hypocritical Tory Sleaze". (Hat-tip to Tony, especially as I don't want any of you to think that I actually read the "Mail on Sunday"!)

What a bunch of utter incompetents the Tories are employing now - and I am not talking about Mr Osborne. As soon as they looked like there was any media traction in the various donations rows, all of the Shadow Cabinet should have been called in to see or visited by some Central Office staffer, with a couple of forensic accountants in tow, and their accounts should have been given a thorough beating. At that point, George's little discussion with Ms Barry would have become apparent and he could have been pointed towards David Willett's procedure as an example of good practice. It doesn't matter that he probably hasn't done anything wrong and that he went and asked the opinion of the official responsible^*.

So:

• George Osborne: probably legally correct (the money has been declared by the party) but what an utter pillock for handing their opponents such a media coup.
• Hain: just fucking resign, you piece of filth. At best you are an orange mong, at worst you are a self-confessed (once you had been well and truly rumbled) crook. You should not be in the cabinet.
• Alexander: where is the report? She should have resigned weeks ago.
  
• Brown (Dizzy): Hmm, this is actually a difficult one and, despite loathing the evil shit with every fibre of my body, I would say that benefit in kind is remarkably difficult to determine accurate valuations for; as Dizzy says, "domains are cheap as chips"; and Silverfish are not the Smith Institute so, much as I would like the tumbrils on Downing Street - he should apologise to Parliament and correct the Register.
• Brown (Guido): Internal Labour party matter - but that shouldn't stop us crowing about it. It just shows that "Dear Prudence"'s economic prowess is fog and myth.
  

* - this, of course, assumes that the Office of the Commons Registrar operates on a more equitable standing than that adopted by HMRC: "You give us inaccurate information, your fault, a penalty fine or jail: we give you inaccurate information, your fault, a penalty fine or jail - for you. We're all right, Jack!"

Sense? On Comment-is-Free?

His premiership is doomed because he has tolerated so many sordid fixes that he would not recognise virtue if it turned out in goal for Raith Rovers.

:)

Beaten to it by a better man ...

Or, at least, an advocate:

Thank the lord...

That this wasn't Prescott!

The Tautology of the Minimalist Socialist State

Alex Hilton is in a fairly significant huff having been the subject of an unusual breach of civility from the normally mild Iain Dale. (Ed notes: because Alex is a lefty blogging twat, of course.) Now, normally, I would completely ignore this declaration of all out war from one of nu-Labour's highly trained pygmy attack shrews, even one who is a demiclone of the Millibore.

But, being slightly bored and even more averse to finding some housework to do, I decided to wade into the morass of imbecility that is "Comment is Free" (Ed notes: "of Sense, Substance and Spelling") and see just what had provoked Iain's ire. I found it here.

Now plenty of people have already embarked on pointed critiques of this obviously-still-hungover metro-socialist drivel. I particularly loved richmanchester's comment on the clear priorities of the C19 down-trodden - Alex was quite obviously right in his certainty that the agricultural labourers of Tolpuddle were martyred (although they weren't, exactly, they were transported not hung, but that is the sobriquet that history has bequeathed them) and the Manchester and Salford Trades Council organised the first Trades Union Congress for:

social causes against racism, sexism and homophobia

Still, what actually makes this a work of virulent knobbery is not his assertion (in the best Neil Harding or Kezia Dugdale "Maggie, Maggie, Maggie - out, out - err, oh - still her fault" mode) that Toryism is evil - it is his entirely unwarranted contention that socialist does not imply statist. While I will admit that socialist does, absolutely, not require authoritarian (nagging is enough), the basic underlying socialist principles require a larger and a more interfering state than libertarian or even conservative ones. I would recommend Chris Dillow's excellent book "The End of Politics" to anybody interested in this.

From each, according to his ability; to each, according to his need."

Karl Marx, 1875, "Critique of the Gotha Programme"

The basic principles of modern British socialism, because that is what the Milliclone was whittering about - communal ownership (of labour, values and aspirations, as well as capital), redistributive (if not actually punitive) taxation, of equality of outcomes rather than equality of opportunities - these all require state interference. And for the state to effectively interfere, it must set targets and it must measure against them. And that takes people - non-productive, inefficient people and, in Britain at least, relatively highly paid and very well pensioned. And, because of the inefficiency, it is not about raising the standards of my local secondary school until they are the same as Eton - or of the laughably named "Adam Smith College" until it is the same as Edinburgh - regardless of the amount of money thrown at them. Unfortunately it is about dragging down excellence to mediocrity, about ensuring that the pampered child of the doting middle class has no better start in life than drug-dependent child of a serially-engaged benefit junkie.

So the size of the state increases, as does the number of people dependent on its direct beneficence. As the number of people who depend on the state increases, so do the arbitrary ways that it can wield its power. Soon, it will wield the state's ultimate sanction, death, for merely trying to help yourself.

Now, he tries to justify himself by referring to the "free market". This is, of course, making the usual politico's confusion between the political term "free market" - i.e. no interference from government - and the much more important term, as far as economics is concerned, "efficient market". The purpose of an efficient market is to reach the optimum balance of exchange between seller and purchaser. Clearly, governments can interfere with this - for reasons good, arbitrary and bad. There are many other things that also interfere - poor communications (especially for perishable goods), inefficient transportation, criminality of all sorts (although how exactly you differentiate this from political activity, I leave as a matter for the reader) and social or cultural pressures. Pretending that "government involvement" in a market, or the lack of it, is the sole governor of market behaviour is abrogating far more effect to our politicos that they deserve but, then, that's Alex for you.

Ed Clarke and His Imperial Satanic Majesty both have thoughtful (and, obviously, for DK, somewhat sweary) posts on state centralisation - read them. Ed does slightly miss the point though - it isn't Tesco-isation. Tesco, for all its faults (and, if you happen to be reading this anyone from Tesco in Cumbernauld - you are going downhill fast, especially for fresh fruit and meat - but that may just be location, location, location) is not a bad supermarket - as its profits show. The food is reasonable, there is variety of qualities and quantities, they provide free ATMs and a reasonable invasive snoopery incentive scheme. What you were actually searching for, Sir, is NAAFI-isation. Now, anybody who has ever been in a Naafi shop in the UK, Germany or Iraq knows just how bad they generally are. About the only thing you can say that they generally have a reasonable selection of a trashy CD players and lads magazines. Opening hours are shite and prices are high. British government run, you see - it isn't inevitable - the various US PXs range from the surprisingly nice to the absolutely superb, the Canadian CANEX system is really effective (if never the size of the Yank malls) and the charity ECHOS restaurants are amazing.

You see, all twat's "modern british socialism" boils down to is an endless kiddy's whine of "it's not fair", backed up by all the coercive power of the modern bureaucratic state. I'll answer it the same way I do my son: that's right. Life isn't fair. Grow up and get on with it.

The Tories aren't evil - government is evil. That is why we need to restrict it to the minimum necessary to ensure a viable state.

Divide and Conquer

One of the tools abused endlessly by the charlatans that rule us is "special treatment" (good or bad) for specific groups. After all, we are all "minorities" if you slice the cake thin enough ... (for an example "reductio ad absurdum" Oxbridge and Eton educated multi-millionaire Dukes are not exactly common!)

So I wasn't too surprised to notice, yesterday, several copies of a huge poster bemoaning assault and violence against workers and pointing out that such is a crime. Of course it is. Assault and violence against anybody (and, in some cases, animals, inanimate property and even politicians) is a crime. You are not even allowed to beat the maliciously indigent (I can see the opportunity for an unpleasantly populist change in the law, here) So why single out workers (apart from the fact that they probably are a minority in the blighted socialist wasteland of Falkirk)?

It doesn't matter. It really doesn't. It is the split by specificity that matters. Take detention without charge. The mendacious statists have got it from all sides with their latest plan to increase the detention for terrorism suspects to 42 / 56 / 90 (I forget which number they are trying now) days. Liberty and Amnesty, as you would reasonably expect; the Guardian & senior Labour figures, quite properly but slightly more surprisingly; Polly, her very self; right wingers; left wingers; the previous Lord Chancellor; Tories and Lib-Dims etc, etc. Almost universal condemnation. Why?

Well, not just because it is illiberal and unjustified. Because we all know, like the Serious and Organised Crime Act, that laws initially announced to apply just to terrorists (aka, unless you are Spanish, Islamists, at the current time) will soon be extended to apply to paedophiles (and there won't be too many prepared to speak up for them), murder suspects and, eventually, those merely guilty of embarrassing (or merely interrupting) our politicians.

Divide and conquer. We need to take a stand, one and all, at each and every attempt to diminish our human rights. Guantanamo & extraordinary rendition; suspension of habeas corpus; extended detention without charge; electoral sleaze; banning protests at Parliament - all great ideas of Gordon and his mates.

Update: And I forgot to add - the use of RIPA Part III (whether actually decryption or key requests) against non-violent animal rights activists as opposed to terrorists (Islamist or ALF) or kiddy-fiddlers.

Dolly the Socialist?

I can't be the first to have spotted this remarkable likeness. Enquiring minds want to know just what has Professor Wilmut been up to?

Perhaps it wasn't Dolly's shortened life that persuaded him that cloning was not yet safe?

So on our left we have Iain's "lefty blogging twat" and on the right we have Gordon's spineless blogging poodle.

Control Freak states Obvious

Well, well. We didn't know that, did we:

Prime Minister Gordon Brown ... told Commons committee chairmen that public and private firms had to come to terms with IT security issues.

But, just remember, deh Gubbinmunt does it better.