I f**king hope not

Of all the drearily predicatable and unpleasant responses to the mindless rioting, this is the one I dread the most:

The rally was attended by Muslims from across Edinburgh who were demanding action to curb religious hatred. ... The SNP MSP Jim Eadie was among the speakers to address the group and pledged their concerns would be heard.

The SNP will currently do just about anything in order to win the referendum. Pandering to a bunch of 7th Century-revivalist misogynist religous fanatics probably seems, to them, just a bit of good sense.

I am a somewhat more than nominal, if unconventional, Christian. I am entirely happy that blasphemy laws are being gotten rid of. Many people in this country are non-religious or non-Christian. They do not believe that Christ is the Son of God. That's fine - and I'm happy for them to say so. I have some beliefs that many, even most, Christians would consider heretical. And I'm happy to talk about them and be challenged about them.

It would be a pity if the effect of the Scottish Independence Referendum would be the crushing of the post-Enlightenment civilisation in Scotland. Especially in the name of the religion of permanent offence. Pat Condell, who disrespects my beliefs nearly as much as he disrespects Islam, says it best.

We're sick and tired of the needless conflict and intimidation that comes from this religion at every turn.

Eck, don't do it. Don't stamp on free speech for a few votes. It is a betrayal of your heritage, the vast majority of the country and of basic human rights. But it wouldn't surprise me if you did. After all, you are a politician.

Eoin Clarke, you are being illogical ...

While I am no respecter of Atos (in this or any other field) and have sympathy for people who have fallen or, worse, been forced through the cracks in the system, this is a (yet another) defective argument:

A minutiae of intelligence is required to grasp the fact that if these people who are found fit to work are now a) not working b) not actively seeking work then they must not have been fit for work in the first place.

Nope. They could have not bothered. They could be doing something that makes them ineligible for benefits, for example (i.e. university, won the lottery). Or they may, indeed, be suffering on the scrap heap of uncaring Coalition-dom.

Hmm.

From the table he posts (p37 of this), there is a note attached to his 43% figure. What does it say?:

Most in this category answered ‘other to’ the question; ‘other categories’ included in training or education or on a government scheme.

Okay, so - and although this does not mean we don't need to do something - his 43% figure is at least halved? Let's look at the next table on p38. This seems to be difficult to make consistent with the note above - unless you assume they are looking at completely different things.

Ah. 14% are self reporting as permanently sick, 8% temporarily sick (no job), 5% temporarily sick (from a job - so on SSP as a minimum?), and 8% simply unemployed. Now, why that latter 8% are outwith the benefits system, I'm not sure (Savings? Partner's earnings? Not bothered applying? Tried but failed to jump through the DWP hoops?).

So we have 22% of people who are not "fit to hold a job" in their opinion (or that of the market) - even if we assume they are all correct - we've already halved Eoin's headline figure.

I'm probably making mistakes here. But then, I'm a PONPI (person of no political importance).

Update: Table 5.9 on p51 says that only 15% of claimants who were FFW or withdrew their claim, at Wave 2, expected to be "unable to work due to sickness", with a further 12% "don't know'. The summary on p54 states that 23% of FFW saw themselves as permanently unfit for work.

Things that are currently pissing me off - 9

This really doesn't help my blood pressure.

Richard Bradford, chairman of the Restaurant Association and the Earl of Bradford, defends the charge.

"No service charge is compulsory, it can only ever be suggested," he says. "It actually works out better. If it was included in the price of the meal, the customer would have to pay VAT on it, and the restaurant would have to pay national insurance.

"Staff have to be adequately rewarded for the work that they do."

Paying staff adequately is the job of the employer. Not of the customer. And staff, if not employers, do have to pay NI on tips in some cases.

Double take

A Mars spokes-weasel, on the deep-fried version:

Should an application be filed, unfortunately, we wouldn't be able to support it as deep-frying one of our products would go against our commitment to promoting healthy, active lifestyles.

Americans. Failing, yet again, in the irony para-olympics.

Err, what?

This from Lady Gaga, quoted at the end of a "climate skeptics are murderers" article here:

Because we as a society are taught politically and religiously that the Apocalypse is coming, it's on its way. But what I'm saying with my show is, ‘We're there right now: this is the Apocalypse.' The fact that we're surrounded by cement and we've already killed everything means the Apocalypse has happened.

Okay, your show may indeed be saying this. But it's a big fat (unlike you) ugly liar. Let's just start with the fact that you are apparently alive, as was your interviewer.

Is there an Olympics Irony medal?

Well, an un-named American is the surprise winner.

Catherine Mayer, Europe editor, wrote: “My colleagues, over from the United States to cover the Games, are puzzled. “And they call Americans jingoistic and sentimental? U.S. journalists would never openly root for the home team,” said one.” 

This is, of course, because American journalism habitually refuses to recognise anything outside of its home state, never mind the USA. So, hence, at anything barring un-natural pinko sports such as"wiff-waff", the USA will naturally be the winners. No rooting required.

Although I understand why ...

This rather disheartens me.

Although this:

Families of the Argentinian war dead sent letters to Argentinian foreign minister Héctor Timerman and Britain's ambassador in Buenos Aires, John Freeman, demanding an urgent and exhaustive investigation.

is indicative of the problem. The people the Argentinians should be addressing are the Falkland Islands Legislative Assembly. Not us.

Edited to add: although the thing I really want to see in that cemetary (as per this earlier post) is the graves identified. "An Argentinian soldier known only unto God" is hardly satisfactory in the days of DNA testing. Although, like so much of this issue, any resolution requires the Argentinian givernment to stop acting like hyper-active toddlers.

Assumptions of ignorance

Just because a (yet another) Guardian journalist is staggeringly yet, unsurprisingly, ignorant, doesn't mean the sensible bits* of the public are:

You are unlikely to have heard mention of it for a simple and disreputable reason: the victims are working-class men rather than celebrities.

Anybody involved with data protection, human resources law or investigations, plus anybody who has read the relevant news stories (Guardian 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; Independent 1, 2, 3; Telegraph 1, 2, 3; even that solid friend of the unions - the Daily Mail 1 & 2), in the last three years knew about it. Hell, it even has its own Wikipedia page!

* On the other hand, I am pleased to be ignorant about x-factor, TV soaps, darts, football, the Top 40 etc.

Things that are currently pissing me off - 8

Saw this in the airport on Monday:

I thought. Hmm. Bored? Check. Forgot my book? Check. Think I can make reading the freebie copy of the Scotsman last longer than the taxying (especially after I've binned everything that mentions Rangers!)? Err, no. Okay, looks interesting. Funny name for a Brit though:

So. He's not a Brit. Why then, Mr Publisher, is he in Brit C95 Desert Camo, wearing Brit Osprey body armour and carrying a Brit SA80 rifle (note - not a sniper rifle. No, Sir!)?

Olympic Level Fuckwittery

Offence 1:

A non-text link to the LOCOG site. Even a relevant one. But hardly claiming their (or the Royal Mint's) endorsement of this blog.

Edited to add: In clear, explicit and deliberate contravention of LOCOG's Ts&Cs for the use of their website:

Links to the Site. You may create your own link to the Site, provided that your link is in a text-only format.

Offence 2:

Gold Sponsor

An offence currently being committed by pretty much every conference on the planet.

Dickheads.

Offence 3:

I predict that it will rain "Citius Altius Fortius" on all of the medals ceremonies in the London 2012 Summer Games. And I hope it rains gold, silver or bronze pure-oleum piss on all of the sponsors, IOC officials and especially the idiots who permitted the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006 to be passed in to law.

But good luck to the athletes.

Long odds?

People generally live, in the Western world, for somewhere between 70 and 80 years. It's getting longer, but that's not significant as far as what I have to say goes.

80 years is on or around 29,220 days. Within a couple, depending on how you sort leap years and centuries.

So, making some flying assumptions including a grotesque one of flatness, any odds worse than 1 in 30,000 are worse than your chance of dropping dead tomorrow.

So when some idiot says that something you enjoy "has a 1 in 200,000 chance of giving you cancer", for example, you know which finger to give them. Especially as cancer survival rates are improving. Remember, your chance of dying is 1 in 1 ...

Update: Swine flu, which was greeted with massive panic and, in the end, resulted in a resounding "Meh!" actually had, in the UK, a death rate of about 1 in 3850.

Wrong, wrong, just wrong

Don't the MSM have any quality checking?

Dr Skelton used the descriptions of 12 women given to a radio station to create the composite and said most had drawn "comparisons with famous film stars".

Haven't read the book. Don't intend to. But he's a bloke.

Things that are currently pissing me off - 7

People who misuse "decimated". This report describes 6000 down to 8 as "decimated".

No, you fool. 6000 down to 5400 is decimated. 6000 down to 8 is "almost wiped out" or "only a handful remained".

More Julianophilia

The allegations against Assange, in contrast, are not nearly so serious, but a case of "he said, she said".

Isn't that true of most rape?

And another thing:

The treatment that the Swedish legal system has inflicted, and would be likely to inflict on Assange would mark him out as guilty and prevent him from preparing a proper defence and, for that reason, having a fair trial.

He's, hopefully, going to be tried in Sweden. This, the article claims, is standard practice in the Swedish legal system. Horror of horrors, no special treatment for St Julian!

So how would it mark him out as guilty? He's allowed to meet with his legal team. How would this preventing him from preparing a proper defence? Anyway, apart from pimping himself on the world stage, what has he been doing for the last 8 or so months?

Note to MSM - avoid hyperbole in factual articles

Leave it for the editorials ...

See here:

The last Indian scientific discovery that is fairly universally acknowledged is the zero.

If this is true, which I doubt, then it is down to the scientific ignorance of the public, not anti-Indian racism. The bit of Indian science I regularly use is Chandrasekhar's work - best known for his calculations of the maximum size of a white dwarf. Hence neutron stars, stellar mass black holes and Type 1a supernovae. He won a Nobel prize, as had his uncle.

Is it too much to expect some basic research from these people?

But, then, perhaps that is the level of complete scientific and cultural ignorance we might rationally expect from a "professor of contemporary literature at the University of East Anglia".

Politically correct bollocks

This.

While I appreciate it is essential to ensure that commercial landlords and professional letting agents don't discriminate illegally, I'm not sure that insisting that flat-shares, "empty nester" room-lets and room shares should be* subject to the same rigorous scrutiny.

I have no problem with Hindi young ladies wanting to share with other young Hindi ladies - or even other vegetarian ladies, rather than some scruffy kebab-stuffing ned. Equally, kebab-stuffing neds might not want some neat and respectable young lady around continuously nagging them to wash the ? (Ed notes: S-E was trying to find something that neds might use for food - but it is all eaten by hand from the cardboard or styrofoam and drunk direct from bottle or can. No washing up ...)  Okay, tidy up their mess, wash themselves, put on clean clothes. Etc. If they wanted that, they'd not have run away from their mums!

Or the orthodox of any religion wishing to share with fellow travellers who would both understand and respect the restrictions of their faith. The law is, if it applies as being suggested, an ass.

"David Goodhart, director of think tank Demos" obviously mixes with some frighteningly unpleasant people if he really thinks that

There's a danger these adverts could create anger and division

Or, as you might expect from Demos, he is merely the asses' arse.

* This was amended on 4 Jul - it originally said "are". Which completely fails to express the point I was trying to make - the private sharing probably 'is' as regulated as the commercial proposition, whereas it almost certainly shouldn't be.

Things that are currently pissing me off - 6

I'm having to type some stuff - limited aspects of a large report - in American. My bloody spell-checker keeps putting all the 'u's back in. Aaaaaaargh. When is gin o'clock, exactly?

Things that are currently pissing me off - 5

Utter ignorance is always a good one - especially if it is in a subject area that I had to work to get a proper grasp of. Like economics.

There is a whole Guardianista / CiFuckedUp rant about the Laffer curve over here. Get over it, folks. The Laffer curve exists. We don't know its shape, how many maxima there may be, how to calculate where they might be (except experimentally) and there is even a valid argument that one of the underlying assumptions (100% tax equals zero revenue in the short term) is much weaker than the other two ('0% tax = 0% revenue' and 'some tax levels give positive revenue'.) (Ed notes: so it may actually not be of that much practical use. Like much else in economics.) But the fact that people you dislike use it as an argument for proposals you oppose no more discredits the theory than the fact that Young Earth Creationists use the fact that "Evilution" is a theory* rather than a fact means that the biblical creation story is the literal truth.

Then somebody takes this to the extreme:

At a properly enforced and managed 100% tax, you have maximum revenue.

I cannot get how somebody who seems not to be an utter dribbling moron (it is properly spelled and punctuated, grammatical and follows a logical, albeit incorrect, sequence) can actually believe such utter shite. The classic thing that differentiates the 'rich' from the 'wage slave' - however well-paid the latter - is the ability to move money about - invest rather than take income and shift in time. Take a capital gain (or a dividend) rather than pay and shift tax treatment. Don't work so hard - because you probably don't actually need the 250th £1000 - and earn less. An income / leisure trade off (as would be working a bit harder and taking enough extra income to be able to afford to pay a cleaner!) At 100% tax you will have the small dribble of revenue from those who cannot escape the strait-jacket. Nobody, not even the heros of socialist fuck-wittery, are going to drag themselves away from their Islington dinner parties to slave at their desks for all of the blooody money to go to the Government.

* Not only is the "Theory of Evolution" generally so called - it is also known to be an incorrect theory. Or, at least, an incomplete one. And very different now, not just to the initial outline from Darwin and Wallace, but also to the version I was taught in the mid-1980s. So it, as our knowledge improves, will itself continue to evolve.

Attack of the Penny Dreadful

Hmm, the sacrifical bleeding heart of the privileged class appears to have got a little bit upset with David Starkey:

When I criticised Starkey for playing xenophobia for laughs, and asked why, as an advocate of Britishness, he lives for part of the year in the United States, the dinosaur showed its claws. 

Possibly, child, because it is a complete and utter irrelevance. I have to spend quite a bit of my time in London - it's not because I'm an advocate of the values either of Eastenders or of the Westminster village. Or even the "fuck them all, let's just grab the cash" attitude of much of the City. You can be an advocate of, well, in Starkey's case more Englishness than Britishness - he's not very keen on Scotland - despite having to, or even liking, working, holiday or even living elsewhere.

But anyway, what did he say to offend her this much? (Ed notes: this is as reported by one of the vermin in this particular rat-fight - don't place to much emphasis on its accuracy. This is a Laurie Penny report, remember!)

"real British values" are not, as Starkey put it, "entrenched in the foothills of the Punjab".

They may not have been entrenched there - and British values are the antithesis of some of the tribal culture of the north-western end of the sub-continent) but, to a very great degree they were created there. The Raj, and its denizens' attempts to recreate a wholly-mythical Golden Age England in their exile is responsible for a lot of of the quainter things that certainly tourist boards like to promote as "Britishness".

If we could just persuade these two to have a very public fight to the death (of their reputations), it is a no lose situation for reality. Especially if we can actually manage to have both of them so wounded that they never dare appear in public again. Unfortunately, the self-belief (idiotic in Laurie's case) seems so invincible in the pair of them that no such luck will attend us.

Fuckwittage on CiF

And it's not about Assange ... (for once, although I may get back to that prat and his deluded fan-boys later):

In doing this, the White House has made a mistake, says experts. "The United States has the most to lose from attacks like these. No other country has so much of its economy linked to the online world," writes Mikko Hypponen, a Finnish cybercrime expert. "By launching Stuxnet, American officials opened Pandora's box. They will most likely end up regretting this decision." Terms like a "digital Pearl Harbor" and "Cybergeddon" are now being tossed around.

Oh. Dear. God. The early part of the previous decade would like its news reports back please.Richard Clarke was sacked for, among other things, grevious invention of the phrase "electronic Pearl Harbor" in about 2003. The Chinese have been planting malware on their opponents (particularly the Tibetans and Taiwanese, but everybody else too) for at least 10 years. Just because the Americans are now admitting that they do it too - apparently there is some sort of election due over their shortly and the incumbent in the village mayoral office wants to brag about how many sleeping tramps he's kicked (Ed notes: or something probably not very similar at all!) - doesn't mean it is suddenly "new."

Just a note: Mikko Hypponen (such an excellent name for an infosec sales-weasel) might, just 'might', not be promoting the products of the F-Secure company he works for. History would suggest otherwise.