Note: Cue smartarse saying because I linked to the video and song I'm just as bad.
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
Did Gwyneth Paltrow just help a convicted paedophile make money?
Uhoh.... where was Max Clifford and all those clever agents saying "errrr Gwyneth... you know the song you're singing will earn a convicted paedophile hundreds of thousands in royalties right?"
Note: Cue smartarse saying because I linked to the video and song I'm just as bad.
Note: Cue smartarse saying because I linked to the video and song I'm just as bad.
Has Conor Burns been to Libya too?
Is Conor Burns MP actually a secret undercover revolutionary spook out-performing the SAS?Overseas visitsYou all thought they were spontaneous uprisings didn't you?
Name of donor: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bahrain
Address of donor: c/o The Embassy of the Kingdom of Bahrain, 30 Belgrave Square, London SW1X 8QB
Amount of donation (or estimate of the probable value): £3,279
Destination of visit: Bahrain
Date of visit: 21-25 October 2010
Purpose of visit: in my capacity as Chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Bahrain I was invited to visit to country to met with Government Ministers and others and to observe the Parliamentary elections that were taking place during the visit.
(Registered 16 November 2010)
Name of donor: Government of Tunisia
Address of donor: Tunisian Embassy, 29 Princes Gate, London SW7 1QG
Amount of donation (or estimate of the probable value): return flights to Tunis and hotel accommodation; value £1,907.10
Destination of visit: Tunis, Tunisia
Date of visit: 4-7 January 2011
Purpose of visit: to meet the British Tunisia Chamber of Commerce, officials in the Department for Culture and Tourism, members of the Tunisian Parliament, the Mayor of Hammermat and some Government Ministers, at the invitation of the Ambassador of Tunisia in the United Kingdom
(Registered 9 February 2011)
IDS simplifies further... but will Osborne follow on personal taxation?
Simplification. Iain Duncan-Smith clearly "gets it". Instead of a multitude of benefits, many mean-tested, there really ought o be just single schemes that are universal but that are also not so extravagant that they either (a) encourage you to stay sitting on your arse and not work, or (b) penalise you for having the audacity to work and save for your old age.
Those are the two situations currently, and it seems in the case of the latter now, Iain Duncan-Smith is making proposals to simplify the pension system so as to address the complete mess left by Labour that punished saving and made the poor poorer through the complexity of the system.
Naturally, I would expect such changes to be opposed by the lefties, and I imagine they'll do so on the basis that to scrap the pension credit system will mean putting all the people processing such forms out of work. After all, that is the real driver behind most of the credit system. The credit system is the proverbial Keynesian hole that the state employ men to dig and men to fill.
Anyhow, seeing as Iain Duncan-Smith "gets it" on the matter of simplification,when will George Osborne finally "get it" on the matter of simplifying the personal tax system?
Those are the two situations currently, and it seems in the case of the latter now, Iain Duncan-Smith is making proposals to simplify the pension system so as to address the complete mess left by Labour that punished saving and made the poor poorer through the complexity of the system.
Naturally, I would expect such changes to be opposed by the lefties, and I imagine they'll do so on the basis that to scrap the pension credit system will mean putting all the people processing such forms out of work. After all, that is the real driver behind most of the credit system. The credit system is the proverbial Keynesian hole that the state employ men to dig and men to fill.
Anyhow, seeing as Iain Duncan-Smith "gets it" on the matter of simplification,when will George Osborne finally "get it" on the matter of simplifying the personal tax system?
Sunday, March 06, 2011
George "hears" us?
Fuel duty huh? Now theres a real political hot potato. As the Middle East countries with all the oil go a bit nutty, the price of a barrel of oil goes up and after you chuck in the refining costs to turn crude into diesel or petrol we all start paying more at the pump.
Yes, fuel for your car has almost reached a shocking 50p per litre. Yes, that really does mean that 80p of the price you pay goes straight to the Treasury.
It was bullshit under Labour that this situation exists and it remains bullshit under the Coalition. But, never fear people, there is alight at the end of tunnel. The Chancellor George Osborne "hears" us when we complain. He says the 1p rise above inflation due in April is Labour's fault anyway as they pre-prepared it, but he's a nice chap so he may not implement it.
Isn't that so nice of him? Instead of a 40 litre tank costing you about £56 he's going to make sure it only costs you about £55.60. You can then buy a packet of fruit gums (if you're lucky) with the extra 40p. That works out to a massive £20.80 saving per year on the assumption that the price stay the same for 52 weeks.
Let's be clear for just one second. Refusing to put a tax increase already planned on something that has an extortionate level of tax on it already is not help because he's hearing anyone. It's a sop and it will likely make bugger all difference as the price continues to rise.
If the Chancellor wants growth then he should get it by taking an axe to fuel duty and put money back in our pockets to spend in the economy on other thing. After all, it won't just help people out it will also save a few businesses from ruin.
Ah yes, but what about the deficit some might say. Well, to those I would say this. Financial arrangements, be they personal, business or national, are influenced by events. Yes there is a bloody great deficit, but there is also a crisis in the region that keeps most of the world moving. So you do some shifting around with the budgets to cope, hopefully with contingency that you planned for (bet they didn't).
We could, perhaps, start by getting rid of Andrew Mitchell's nonsensical International Development department. When you're "in the shit" financially you don't start giving away what little money you have to strangers - although I realise that such ideas are "pie in the sky".
Seriously though, what you don't do is stand there and tell us you "hear" the complaints and then propose to throw us a bone worth about a half of the square root of zero.
Yes, fuel for your car has almost reached a shocking 50p per litre. Yes, that really does mean that 80p of the price you pay goes straight to the Treasury.
It was bullshit under Labour that this situation exists and it remains bullshit under the Coalition. But, never fear people, there is alight at the end of tunnel. The Chancellor George Osborne "hears" us when we complain. He says the 1p rise above inflation due in April is Labour's fault anyway as they pre-prepared it, but he's a nice chap so he may not implement it.
Isn't that so nice of him? Instead of a 40 litre tank costing you about £56 he's going to make sure it only costs you about £55.60. You can then buy a packet of fruit gums (if you're lucky) with the extra 40p. That works out to a massive £20.80 saving per year on the assumption that the price stay the same for 52 weeks.
Let's be clear for just one second. Refusing to put a tax increase already planned on something that has an extortionate level of tax on it already is not help because he's hearing anyone. It's a sop and it will likely make bugger all difference as the price continues to rise.
If the Chancellor wants growth then he should get it by taking an axe to fuel duty and put money back in our pockets to spend in the economy on other thing. After all, it won't just help people out it will also save a few businesses from ruin.
Ah yes, but what about the deficit some might say. Well, to those I would say this. Financial arrangements, be they personal, business or national, are influenced by events. Yes there is a bloody great deficit, but there is also a crisis in the region that keeps most of the world moving. So you do some shifting around with the budgets to cope, hopefully with contingency that you planned for (bet they didn't).
We could, perhaps, start by getting rid of Andrew Mitchell's nonsensical International Development department. When you're "in the shit" financially you don't start giving away what little money you have to strangers - although I realise that such ideas are "pie in the sky".
Seriously though, what you don't do is stand there and tell us you "hear" the complaints and then propose to throw us a bone worth about a half of the square root of zero.
Saturday, March 05, 2011
Liars versus Media Watchers: Both idiots
How funny, some reporter that no one will have ever heard of has decided to resign from a newspaper that (a) few people read and (b) is so patently one step away from pure fiction on most days that you'd need to be thicker than a retarded monkey to not realise and it's BIG news for the tax avoiding right-on Guardian. Hell, they even have his resignation letter to the Daily Star proprietor, also proprietor of porn (a dying industry thanks to the Internet but I digress).
So, the letter is a bit of a rant by this unknown reporter about how the Daily Star makes stuff up. I know, shocking isn't it? A national daily newspaper with tits and arse on the front page makes stuff up huh? Who'da thunk it? Shocking betrayal of trust to its readers huh? Outrageous! The world is ending... arggghhh the sky is falling, 2012 looms, it's a sign I tell thee!
Apparently the newspaper also engages in hypocrisy, where it laments for example a comedian for a dodgy joke about race of gender, and then on the following pages engages in that which it just condemned pages before. Such a rarity isn't it? Newspaper shouldn't do that and it's absolutely correct for the Guardian to report this sort of thing because it would never have an editorial stance that was the opposite of other things it wrote or did.
You can probably tell where I'm going with this. It is a truly slow news days when the big news is for newspapers is about newspapers themselves. Sure, it gets the fired up anally retentive "media watch" type people even more fired up. I'm talking here about the gibbering and chattering classes who, when an horrendous act of violence occurs never blame the person that did it but rather like to say that the media are to blame.
Even the reporter you've never heard of is does it in his resignation letter, noting that "The lies of a newspaper in London can get a bloke's head caved in down an alley in Bradford." Actually, the person that caves someone head in in Bradford is probably the type of person who would do that anyway, the newspaper didn't make them do it.They made themselves do it because they're a twat that does that sort of thing anyway.
If these people must engage in post hoc ergo propter hoc foolishness, perhaps they ought to start blaming the parents of the parents of parents instead right back to the Middle Ages and further? Fuck it, blame shagging. After all, if it wasn't for shagging people wouldn't be born and if people weren't born then they wouldn't do terrible nasty things to other people. Let's ban shagging to stop the violence because shagging is to blame!
Actually, thinking about, banning shagging would please the pious hand-wringers greatly I think. After all, Richard Desmond makes his money from it so he'd be skint. Everyone's a winner!
Seriously though. The news that a newspaper makes stuff up is not news, it's basic common sense. Those that shout from the rooftops about it on their missions of truth betray something far worse about their true motives. For within the moral righteousness lies their own disdain for the intellectual capabilities of the proles to spot bullshit when they see it.
The reality is that this "story" is not about "truth in media". It's about the low opinion of the masses held by the pseudo-intellectual elite. The same elite who engage daily in fallacious reasoning to justify curtailing the freedom of individuals (who are not as clever as them) to read what they want, when they want.
There is a distinct irony here too. For they so hate the views of people that would curtails freedom that they wish to curtail freedom to combat it.
Fuck it, we might as well just start burning books now and be done with it. At least it'll keep both the knuckle-draggers and snobbish media watching elitists happy, they're different sides of exactly the same coin after all.
So, the letter is a bit of a rant by this unknown reporter about how the Daily Star makes stuff up. I know, shocking isn't it? A national daily newspaper with tits and arse on the front page makes stuff up huh? Who'da thunk it? Shocking betrayal of trust to its readers huh? Outrageous! The world is ending... arggghhh the sky is falling, 2012 looms, it's a sign I tell thee!
Apparently the newspaper also engages in hypocrisy, where it laments for example a comedian for a dodgy joke about race of gender, and then on the following pages engages in that which it just condemned pages before. Such a rarity isn't it? Newspaper shouldn't do that and it's absolutely correct for the Guardian to report this sort of thing because it would never have an editorial stance that was the opposite of other things it wrote or did.
You can probably tell where I'm going with this. It is a truly slow news days when the big news is for newspapers is about newspapers themselves. Sure, it gets the fired up anally retentive "media watch" type people even more fired up. I'm talking here about the gibbering and chattering classes who, when an horrendous act of violence occurs never blame the person that did it but rather like to say that the media are to blame.
Even the reporter you've never heard of is does it in his resignation letter, noting that "The lies of a newspaper in London can get a bloke's head caved in down an alley in Bradford." Actually, the person that caves someone head in in Bradford is probably the type of person who would do that anyway, the newspaper didn't make them do it.They made themselves do it because they're a twat that does that sort of thing anyway.
If these people must engage in post hoc ergo propter hoc foolishness, perhaps they ought to start blaming the parents of the parents of parents instead right back to the Middle Ages and further? Fuck it, blame shagging. After all, if it wasn't for shagging people wouldn't be born and if people weren't born then they wouldn't do terrible nasty things to other people. Let's ban shagging to stop the violence because shagging is to blame!
Actually, thinking about, banning shagging would please the pious hand-wringers greatly I think. After all, Richard Desmond makes his money from it so he'd be skint. Everyone's a winner!
Seriously though. The news that a newspaper makes stuff up is not news, it's basic common sense. Those that shout from the rooftops about it on their missions of truth betray something far worse about their true motives. For within the moral righteousness lies their own disdain for the intellectual capabilities of the proles to spot bullshit when they see it.
The reality is that this "story" is not about "truth in media". It's about the low opinion of the masses held by the pseudo-intellectual elite. The same elite who engage daily in fallacious reasoning to justify curtailing the freedom of individuals (who are not as clever as them) to read what they want, when they want.
There is a distinct irony here too. For they so hate the views of people that would curtails freedom that they wish to curtail freedom to combat it.
Fuck it, we might as well just start burning books now and be done with it. At least it'll keep both the knuckle-draggers and snobbish media watching elitists happy, they're different sides of exactly the same coin after all.
How to build a semi-conspiracy theory in 10 steps
Morning all. As it's Saturday I thought I'd have a little fun providing you with a guide to building your own partisan semi-conspiracy theory in just 10 steps. Here's how to do it.
*** Yes I know that in reality this will take more than 10 steps, but hey, that wouldn't make as good a title would it?
- Choose your target, ensure they are of a diametrically opposed political viewpoint and are involved with a political organisation you hate the most on principle. Remember you don't have to be in an organisation yourself. Basically, if you're right wing then your target is going to be socialist scum and if you're left wing they're vicious fledgling neo-nazi scum. If you're a centrist you just hate everyone whilst pretending to be moderate. Simples!
- Bitch, moan about and hassle your target enough that they call you a loopy loony tune of mega-proportions.
- Bitch, moan about and hassle your target's boss about how your target has called you a name.
- If the boss contacts you but doesn't agree with everything you say, they're in on it. If the boss doesn't contact you at all, they're in on it.
- Contact the boss's boss to complain about the target and the boss.
- Apply step #4 to the action or inaction of the boss's boss.
- Contact the boss's boss's boss to complain about the target, their boss and their boss.
- Apply step #4 to the action or inaction of the boss's boss's boss.
- Continue previous steps ad nauseum up and sideways through the target's organisation. You may also want to break out of the organisation and bring other organisations in where someone in the target organisation left and went elsewhere. The tenuous connection may be tenuous but it remains a connection.
- Go "public" with all the gory details of how no one wants to listen to you because they're all bastards from that organisation you hate, reaffirming why everyone should hate the organisation, because they're all either in on it or at least complicit in the event that started everything.
*** Yes I know that in reality this will take more than 10 steps, but hey, that wouldn't make as good a title would it?
Friday, March 04, 2011
Asessing risk will never be as cheap again!
At the beginning of the week, if I recall correctly, there was a news story doing the rounds that a European Court ruling has decided that it was sexual discrimination if insurance companies, who deal in assessing risk, had different premiums for men and women.
That young males tend to have more crashes than young females, and in general its men rather than women that make claims is apparently not fair. Ironically enough the ruling was about it not being fair to men which makes a change.
Of course, the ruling is absurd, but I was rather amused to see that the Government Equalities Office pumped out a press release yesterday on age discrimination that said,
You see this is the hilarious and utterly bizarre consequence of the so-called "equalities" agenda.
On the one hand, the rulings say things like "you can;t have a blanket policy" that discriminates, and then, on the other, what you end up with is a blanket policy that equalises the cost which then means overrule the insurance companies just raise the premiums for all to cover the cost of those they consider a higher risk.
Thus the perception of discrimination is removed, but underneath it still remains but we all pay equally for it. Genius init?
That young males tend to have more crashes than young females, and in general its men rather than women that make claims is apparently not fair. Ironically enough the ruling was about it not being fair to men which makes a change.
Of course, the ruling is absurd, but I was rather amused to see that the Government Equalities Office pumped out a press release yesterday on age discrimination that said,
Providers of financial services, such as insurance companies, will still be allowed to use age when assessing risk and deciding prices.How long before the EU rules that is wrong too, at which point insurance premiums will rise for everyone?
You see this is the hilarious and utterly bizarre consequence of the so-called "equalities" agenda.
On the one hand, the rulings say things like "you can;t have a blanket policy" that discriminates, and then, on the other, what you end up with is a blanket policy that equalises the cost which then means overrule the insurance companies just raise the premiums for all to cover the cost of those they consider a higher risk.
Thus the perception of discrimination is removed, but underneath it still remains but we all pay equally for it. Genius init?
Graffiti of the Day
Alright, alright, I know I said I would be back yesterday but I got sidetracked with something that is as yet unfinished, however, I'm back now. So, to kick off with a just a small snippet from the graffiti board in parliament aka Early Day motions, we have this little waste of money.
Whilst we're on the subject of graffiti, I was amused by the last words in this little treasure.
That this House records its congratulations to Ryan Giggs on the 20th anniversary of his debut for Manchester United on 2 March 1991; is aware that throughout his illustrious career he has developed a deserved reputation for sportsmanship and fair play; recognises that his skills have been admired throughout the world; that 20 years on he is now the country's most decorated player, and that he is widely seen as a role model for team mates and young footballers everywhere; thanks him for his contribution to the national game for both his club and his country, Wales; and wishes him all the very best for his future.I prefer to call this the "spot the Manchester United fans and/or the Welshman" EDM.
Whilst we're on the subject of graffiti, I was amused by the last words in this little treasure.
That this House notes the celebrations of Cornwall's patron saint, St Piran, on 5 March each year are growing in scope, support and significance; believes that this is a valuable opportunity for the people of Cornwall to celebrate their unique heritage, language, culture and aspirations; recognises that those who support patron saints' days in other regions and nations in the United Kingdom are also seeking official acknowledgement; welcomes the fact that several town and parish councils have already made the day a staff holiday; and calls on the Government to make St Piran's Day a public holiday in Cornwall.No doubt the people of Devon who drive to work in Cornwall will be well chuffed if such a ludicrous idea of county-based public holidays came about.
Wednesday, March 02, 2011
Parish Notice
Apologies for the lack of blogging all. I have been away for a few days and am now catching up on mail. Back tomorrow.
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