Daft Headline Of The Day

Kidnapped Couple: PM calls on pirates to release British couple immediately.

Because Gordon’s “calls” carry SO MUCH weight with Somalian pirates, don’t they! Do they even have televisions in their dinghies?

Question Time

Oh. I love saturdays, especially the ones I don’t have to work. I love my telephone too; my wife and sister-in-law are here and have control of the television, so I took advantage of the time to watch thursday’s Question Time on IPlayer, on my phone.

Now. I’m no BNP supporter, I could never support a leftist party racist or no. I’ve been down the left-hand path before and I didn’t like where it was going. I determined to watch it with an open mind however, and I thought he came across quite well. In fact, I think this was a spectacular own goal for an establishment still crippled by the no-platform debate.

They started on race issues in an early attempt to derail Griffin, and he manfully managed to dissemble his way through, not a difficult task as the other panellists (and audience) talked over and interrupted him throughout the section. This had the dual effects of not only setting him up as an underdog straight away (and as we know, the British love underdogs) but also saving him the trouble of having to explain and debate his views. Classic.

Once the ‘debate’ moved onto Islam, he was remarkably restrained, clearly and simply mentioning the things from the Koran that we’re not supposed to talk about while the other contestants panellists frothed and foamed. He cleverly framed the issue in terms that nobody can disagree with (women’s rights and the stoning of rape victims etc.) and was fairly unimpeachable on this, at least among those who don’t really want shariah law, thankyou very much.

In fact, once he was past the race section of questions he was pretty straight throughout. He may have been lying (and probably was) but if he was, he was lying straight out, while the others waffled and dissembled and shouted him down and refused to answer questions in traditional Westminster style. To someone pretty pissed off with the LibLab Con (who didn’t know any better) he could really seem like a straight-talkin’ kinda guy.

Which leads me again to wonder, is this deliberate? There was a lot he said that I could agree with. He doesn’t like the EU, he doesn’t like the BBC, and I had to nod my head when he asked Jack Straw if he would dare go to a Maori or a Sioux and ask them “what do you mean by indiginous?” Not because I’m a white supremacist (I’m not) but because it was a fair and logical question, and Straw’s refusal to be drawn on it was frustrating. If I didn’t know any better, and didn’t know all about liberty and freedom and what leftists like Griffin really want (control, same as the other three leftists on the panel) I might well have started to think maybe he’s got something, and no wonder the others don’t want him to speak, because they’re all saying the same things and he’s saying the sort of things that people are really thinking. In short, I may well have thought he was a reasonable man not being given a fair shake of the stick, and he’s not really a racist anymore, and maybe we should give him a chance?

Of course, I didn’t think any of those things because I know what Griffin’s really about, but to others? Especially those white, English working class who are sick of being disallowed from acknowledging or celebrating their own culture (another point Griffin tried to raise and was shouted down on), and some of them do watch Question Time, you know.

This was either a spectacular own-goal or this was how it was intended to be. I’ll let you decide for yourself.

Holby City

Is it just me, or did tonight’s Holby City just advocate railroading patients into operations they don’t really need, simply to show off fancy new machinery?
As soon as the patient confessed to being a smoker, the doctor’s attitude changed. Since the whole programme had a sub-plot involving the need to find a patient needing a heart by-pass to show off the new robotics suite, and considering the speed of diagnosis, the only conclusion that one can reach is that smokers are fair game for use as guinea pigs.

The Slave Class

I’ve covered this before -in the post that has garnered my largest number of hits to date, and still generates a fair amount of traffic, even several months later- but it seems appropriate to go over it again in the light of certain announcements from the Conservative conference.

The transition of the Underclass to a fully-fledged Slave Class was announced, as the conservative leader pledged to force the long-term unemployed into training or community work or face losing their benefits.

Many people in the UK are caught in the benefits trap, and make no mistake; a trap it most definitely is. It’s become a cliche that one “would be better off on benefits” and like most cliches it has an element of truth. Once caught in that trap it becomes almost impossible to break free, as mummy has found out. Childcare costs, rents, the cost of travelling to work and gaps in (or lack of) a CV conspire to stop work paying and hard to find, even before the crash. Work is even harder to find now of course, and with every increase in the minimum wage (ostensibly there to improve the situation) it gets harder and harder.

So these souls are caught in a dependency on the State. Now the State intends to force these people to work. No bad thing you might think. There are obviously jobs in communities that need doing and we’re paying for them anyway, right?

Take a second to think it through though.

That could well be your job. Especially if you are a striking bin man, or a postman, or some other worker in the public sector. Why pay a decent above-minimum wage rate complete with pension when you can simply get a load of JSA-types from the job centre on £1 an hour?

They may end up in private-sector jobs too, on “work experience” schemes. Contract cleaners, bar staff, machine operators and caretakers: I’m talking to you. The implications of this move are far-reaching and affect far more people than those on benefits.

Rather than looking to the causes of unemployment these proposals (and remember these proposals have been repeated more-or-less by both the opposition and the incumbents) effectively recruit the entire underclass into the public sector and actually divert labour, opportunity and money away from the productive classes.

All it does is create a cheaper class of workers (with all the disadvantages of temporary work and none of the advantages) who will be in direct competition with those already working. Over time, more and more workers will be laid off as the minimum wage ensures it is cheaper to draft in cheaper labour from the government. Those laid-off workers will go on benefit, and thus increase westminster’s labour pool.

Going to a logical conclusion, every low- or un-skilled position could eventually be contracted via the state, greatly increasing the state’s intrusion in the economy.

Still keen?

Barry’s Prize

Anybody else think that the storyline involving Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize was cooked up long ago, when it was still assumed that his gimmick would have gotten over with the fans?

Industrial

The BBC are reporting this morning on the strikes currently going on or beeing mooted, and headed their segment with the tagline: “Is this heralding a new age of industrial unrest?”

Well maybe, but it isn’t really industrial unrest, is it? With the exception of bus drivers all the workers mentioned were public service workers. Mail workers, council “workers,” bin men… even those working for private companies are paid for and directed by the public sector. And buses aren’t even properly private: there’s no free market in bus routes as they are stipulated by the local “authority.” This is public sector workers indulging in dark mutterings in response to the “cuts” announced by the Conservative leadership (and admitted to by New Labour). They can strike with impunity, or course. They are working in jobs that either help run the state machine (council “workers”) or are relied upon by the taxpayer. They will make a big impact and there is no danger of the company going to the wall over it. I don’t see too many truly industrial workers (i.e. productive private-sector workers) going out on strike, partially because they are less unionised than the public sector but surely at least in part because people are aware that striking could kill the golden goose, and also that however unpleasant the changes their companies are enforcing are -and they are- the aim is generally the survival of the company (and everybody’s job).

The BBC are hardly impartial on this. As a part of the public sector themselves they have an interest in not only hyping the situation but in muddying the waters between the public and private sectors, and occluding the difference between the decreasing few who pay for all this, and the increasing many who get their payslip out of the communistal pot.

Quote of the week

Not that I’m comparing Gordon Brown with Hitler, you understand.

By all accounts, Hitler was charismatic and a good public speaker.

Juliette. Bloody brilliant.

Ok, now it’s personal.

I usually try not to swear on my blog, but this time I’m fucking going to have to.

They’ve taken all the fucking sugar out of Dr. Pepper! It tastes bloody awful. I’m fuming. Absofuckingcunting lutely livid!

Just because some lardy fuckers drink too much fizzy and get fat (and who’s damn business is it if they do, anyway?) why should that affect me? I’m going to be running around at work all afternoon so I chose a fizzy drink to give me a sugar boost. Why is that option taken away? I’m not fucking fat and even if I was so fucking what?

The health agenda just got personal.

Who to take it out on?

Professional Wrestling’s Finest Hour

Getting all nostalgic on youtube, I looked up this:

Go to 6:30 to see Mick Foley fall onto the Spanish announcer’s table.

It might be planned from the start but the shit these guys go through for the love of the game and our entertainment surely deserves a lot of respect.

Back In The EUSSR

I’ve been back a week now, and already it seems like forever ago that I was basking in the Turkish sunshine. It was a relief getting off the plane and feeling that cold air suffusing into my every pore (I’m a cold weather person) but to be honest, poor and warm as they are over there I would be much happier in Turkey. I’m hardly a man of means (by no means…!) anyway, the pace of life is so much more agreeable and they all go around smiling and being friendly to each other. The sourpuss expressions worn on everyone’s faces in the UK weighed heavy on my soul at first although by now it seems normal again.

The trip back in wasn’t too bad, I was expecting a nightmare getting through Gatwick this end (it’s always a nightmare through Dover) but customs didn’t really trouble us and passport control (although bizzarely less able to process a single aeroplane full of people efficiently than Dalaman) wasn’t too terrible. It’s a bit disappointing really, I was hoping to fire off a post lambasting the English immigration on the way home and -wind taken from my sails- I haven’t managed a post all week.

That and work is so stressful that I’ve hardly had time to think, my stress level is back up to a pre-holiday level and the only plus is that I have decided on the music I want playing on the radio when (not if) I finally go postal: