A MAJOR study has confirmed the existence of salivating, murderous clowns lurking under the bed of every child, Britain's parents said last night.

Who could they be talking about?

Rip off Britain.

Well, everyone knew that Microsoft sells Windows cheaper elsewhere so it shouldn't come as much of a shock that Apple's new OS, Snow Leopard, will be cheaper in the US than in Britain as well. Cheaper in Oz too, though post Ashes nobody here will give a the slightest shit. On the other hand 25 quid is still pretty cheap compared to a licensed copy of Windows, but look, they're both a pain in the fucking arse when they don't do what you forked over the cash for.



When they don't work they're both shit at any price.

Devastating news for many British young people.

Some of them will need to find a real ambition now. People will only put up with the format for so long before they get tired of watching self obsessed idiots that they wouldn't want to sit next to in the pub, and that were generally even more annoying than the previous year's crop. I stopped watching years ago when I decided after the launch show that I wanted the whole fucking lot of them to be evicted at the first opportunity unless they drowned in the jacuzzi first.

Bye bye Big Brother. The only downside is that I'd have preferred to see the back of the other one first.

The dangers of parenthood.

Sometimes I'm glad we don't have kids. I like my car the way it is.

A good day to be English.

Unless you live in Australia.

Fuck.

Intermission.

Christ, where the hell did that week go? And I still don't have time spare to blog so in the meantime here is some music, and possibly an insight into the teenage mind.



UPDATE: I may have more time to blog this week since it seems very likely that a state of mourning will be declared across the nation when the Australia cricket team fail to get anywhere near the 550 or more runs they're going to need, and as a result I'll have fuck all else to do.

Twitter.

Twitter is one of those things I don't quite get. It seems simple enough but like a lot of the web it's always seemed like a solution looking for a problem. Yes, I know about the tweets coming out of China and Iran, and while I stopped being dismissive of it because of that I still wonder if it isn't just the Friends Reunited of the moment. I heard recently that Facebook is starting to become slightly uncool among the Gen X-ers Gen Y-ers* not just because of the current appeal of Twitter but also because their parents are starting to sign up and social network at them in front of their friends, and I suspect that sooner or later something similar will happen to Twitter. But over on the LPUK blog I noticed this and this, so perhaps I should get into it (and Facebook since it too has similar groups I'd support if I used it) while it's still worth it.

*Corrected when Mrs Exile pointed out that I've got Generation X and Y the wrong way round again. This may be typical for a Gen X bloke on a Friday night.

Greenwashing Aussie Rules football.

This weekend is the so called 'Green Round' of the AFL, the elite Aussie Rules football tournament. Tonight's game at the Melbourne Cricket Ground began at 7.30pm, which means playing under floodlights. Tomorrow night sees a game at the Gabba in Brisbane and another at the ANZ Stadium in Sydney, both starting at 7.10pm and therefore both needing to be played under lights. And the last of the three Sunday games is at 4.40pm at the Telstra Dome Etihad Stadium or whatever the fuck we have to call the stadium in Melbourne's docklands, which presumably will also be under lights partly because sunset isn't long after and partly because it might be pissy enough this weekend for them to shut the roof.

Now that's pretty normal scheduling: one game on Friday evening, two Saturday afternoon and two more Saturday evening, and three spread across Sunday afternoon and evening, which means that for a fair bit of the season at least four games each weekend need lights. Huge, big, fuck off lights in fact. Huge, big, fuck off lights that, in the case of Melbourne, presumably are powered by the burning of brown coal in the Latrobe Valley just like the lights in the room I'm sitting in, the computer I'm typing this on, and the TV in the corner showing Hawthorne kicking the shit out of Adelaide (probably too little too late for their season). So how much greener is all this than any other weekend in the football season? Well, they've put a load of green tips on the website and will show some on the big screens at the half time break in some games, and predictably enough there's a load of stuff about venues chipping in too: the MCG has a food miles friendly menu and the Telstretihad Stadi-dome is using its roof to capture rainwater* etc. But wouldn't it be an obvious move, even if just for the so-called green round, to reschedule the fucking games so they're all played during daylight and save all the power needed for those huge, big, fuck off floodlights I mentioned earlier? It just seems to me that apart from a few eco-advice type platitudes and a bit of green window dressing, all of which is pretty easily overlooked if all you're interested in is the actual footy, "Green Round" is the same as pretty much any other.

If I was a cynical type, which of course I am, I'd suspect that there's a bit of greenwash going on to keep the appeal of the brand as broad as possible. Like Earth Hour it seems more like paying lip service to the idea of being all carbon friendly and eco-neutral without actually demanding any real sacrifice. I suppose as a sceptic (converted from Believer many years ago) I ought to be annoyed, but precisely because greenwash exercises like Earth Hour and Green Round make square root of fuck all difference to me personally I'm more amused than anything else. I suppose this sort of thing is going to last until the last wheel drops off the global warming bandwagon.


* And given the size of the damn thing and the water situation here I have to say that this is one bit of greenery I'm bang alongside, though since they must use a lot of water keeping the pitch I'd say it seems like a good business decision as much as anything else.

Funny.

Seen on a car sticker in Melbourne a short while ago:

Do you remember the days when motor racing was dangerous and sex was safe?

Oh for fuck's sake.

Following on from this, apparently a solution has been proposed: a snake ban.

[head/desk]

Jesus fucking Christ. Yes, a snake is probably not an ideal pet unless you know what you're doing, and being a cat owner the other story wasn't pleasant reading for me. But the solution to everything these days seems to be another fucking ban or a licence or a regulator, and it's probably not. The owners of the cat that was eaten should be able to sue the owner of the python, though if there was a fucking python in the garden next door I wouldn't let my cats out precisely because of the risk one or both might end up inside the fucking thing. Still, the point is that this is something that individuals ought to be able to sort out either between themselves or in a court. As for the snake-as-a-gang-weapon thing, come on! Rules and laws and bans haven't kept fucking guns and knives out of criminal hands, and there's people pondering whether to legislate against snakes? Hardly a fucking policing priority I'd have thought.

The best of times, the worst of times?

Unemployment may be at its highest level for nearly fifteen years, which is rough for the 2.5 million or so concerned (as well as all the ones that aren't working but don't count towards the unemployment figues) and pretty fucking grim reading alongside the news that much of the west is fucked and the UK in particular is even fucked-er than first thought. But it's not all bad news. Three quarters of a million people entitled to benefits, but not taking them.

Many are thought to be middle class professionals. A Government source was quoted as saying: “We are very keen to make sure we are reaching out to everyone who may find themselves without a job. That may include people who do not think of themselves as the sort of people who claim benefits.”
Has it not crossed their minds that these people may not wish to be reached out to, do not need the money, may be using their redundancy to get by and are preparing to start a new job or invest in a new project?

Couldn't have put it better myself. Having been there myself and also got by without help I take my hat off to the lot of them. If only rather more than 750,000 liked to think of themselves as the sort of people who don't claim benefits.

But it's not just individuals that prefer to rely on themselves rather than join the queue for handouts. Jaguar Land Rover is doing it too, which is great news when half the car makers in the world seem to be sucking ministerial cocks for money to prop up their ailing firms.

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has rejected assistance from the Government and has found the financing from foreign banks needed to secure 14,500 jobs.

Ratan Tata, head of Tata Group, which owns JLR, wrote to Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, to say that the terms of the Government’s aid were “very onerous and hence unacceptable”.

Okay, to be fair here it is true that Jaguar Land Rover did ask for money, but decided to stop after unzipping the fly and taking a look at what it was expected to swallow in return for the cash.

Tata said yesterday it would secure financing from commercial lenders, thought to be mainly foreign institutions. The State Bank of India, part-owned by the Indian Government, is said to be providing guarantees.

JLR’s Indian owners are said to be baffled at the Government’s reluctance to offer help, given the large number of jobs at stake. The Government is thought to have been unwilling to bail out a private company and set a precedent for other troubled manufacturers.

Who cares? In an ideal world I'd prefer that governments didn't go baling out badly run businesses, and that JLR didn't feel the need to go running to the government in the first place but had the confidence in itself and its products. I confess to having always had a soft spot for Jaguar ever since getting a ride in a family friend's XJ12 some 25 years ago, and I would be saddened if the firm went tits up just when it's trying really new designs and getting a fair amount of praise for it. I saw an XF in the flesh for the first time a few months back, and if we hadn't both been doing 100 kph on the freeway I'd have been tempted to get out and lick it. It's not pretty from everywhere but it knocks its predecessor into a cocked hat if you ask me.

So well done and good luck to the 750,000 self reliant people who've decided against taking benefits and Jaguar Land Rover, despite having asked and also despite some tenuous involvement with the Indian government (which is, after all, the least inappropriate government to be involved in financing what's now a division of an Indian company) - in my book you all deserve to succeed. Now if you could all give some thought about what you should demand of the next government...


UPDATE: Wat Tyler thinks that many people aren't signing up for Jobseeker's Allowance because they think the Job Centres are a waste of time and hopeless for actually finding a job. Probably something in that.

Alan Duncan...

... what a total twat!



Look Alan, you venal little bastard, there may be an element of truth in that but I expect that fairly few people who have "done anything" in the outside would want to go into Westminster politics these days anyway. To paraphrase the old joke, you'd rather stick to something comparatively honest like being the piano player in a pox ridden whorehouse. Except of course you wouldn't, and that's how we tell the difference.

Cunt.

This will make the Righteous crack the shits.

Just get a load of this.



Six years old! Six!

At just six years of age, Miko Andres from the Philippines is believed to be the world's youngest practical shooter.
Pictured here at the Armscor Shooting Club, Miko loads, aims and fires his semiautomatic weapon at moving targets.
Complete with a gun belt, shades and a tailored shirt, Miko travels across the country participating in national junior competitions.
Competing against children ten years his senior (in the 9-17 age group), Miko is now looking to travel to America to test his talents.
For Miko's father, Cresencio "Mike" Pascua Andres JR, the boy's passion and natural ability for practical shooting has been carefully monitored by his family and shooting community.
"It is within the family and friends that Miko was influenced to love and enjoy the practical shooting sport," says Mike. "Because of his interest, we took turns in teaching, training and coaching him on the basics of the sport."

It's not the theme of the DT article, which is very neutral as an article in the Other Sports/Shooting section should be, but I can hear the cries of alarm from here. Won't somebody please think of the chiiiill... er, the other chiiiiilldren!

Ha! Well I am thinking of the children - the other children - and I think that too fucking many of them are going to grow into adolescence thinking that guns are either toys or something to be feared, whereas the truth is that they are neither. Miko Andres on the other hand has been introduced to shooting in a safe way and is under the supervision of people who we must assume love him and have his best interests at heart.

Despite the obvious dangers and concerns raised over a boy of six handling such a weapon, Mike is eager to stress that safety is always at the forefront of his mind.
"Safety is of the utmost importance," he says, adding his son was having guidance and help from a range of shooting institutions to try and prevent accidents.
"As a parent, I too am worried about the dangers of the sport. Accidents and injuries might happen in the course of the sport and that is always a concern.
He added: "Here he is, the youngest practical shooter the world has ever known.
"As a growing, normal kid, Miko is also into other children's games. He enjoys the company of his schoolmates.
"Miko is very young but is determined to excel in the practical shooting sport," says Mike.
"He has been taught a lot of discipline and respect.
"Miko, I and his team coach, constantly talk about the dangers of the sport and we are always reminding him that he is in a 'big boys' game and that safety of of the utmost importance."

He seems highly likely to grow into someone who can be trusted to handle guns safely and responsibly, which despite me being an occasional shooter as well is more than I can say for myself at his age.

Not exactly news...

... but more reasons why so many people think the UK is a surveillance society. What really gets on my tits is how many of the fuckers are local council busybodies and, to pour piss into the wound, using legislation like RIPA that was supposed to be about tackling terrorists and organized crime. Well, many believed it was bullshit at the time and almost with every passing week we're proved more correct. The good news is that the cunts responsible for bringing in these laws- laws that are not so much badly thought out as deliberately designed to lie down, open up and whore themselves to those very same bastards who brought them in - that allow the ongoing stasi-fication of Britain will be out of jobs in less than a year. The bad news is that the pricks that sit opposite have been worryingly quiet about their plans to repeal them. Think about that every day between now and the next election, and ask the prospective candidates what the fuck they propose to do about it. If you get evidence of some independent thought, even if it's on a line you might not agree with, they might be worth a punt. If you get someone who's obviously the next generation of lobby fodder tell them to come back after they've fucking grown a pair of their own. LPUK still looks like the nearest to what I believe in, though it's not 100% and it still remains to be seen if they'll get anywhere or if they'll even be here in a couple of elections time. I'm not a member and being an ex-pat I'm not sure it's even appropriate to join, but despite the disappointing result they got in the recent by election (won by the aforementioned next gen lobby fodder) I still think they might be the best hope for the UK in the long term. For sure the other options, with the possible exception of UKIP, aren't.

Aussie censorship - stupid on many levels.

That's Risen, a computer game due to be released around October this year. Not, however, in Australia where it is felt to be a little too adult for... er, the adult population of the country, which is the game's target audience. There's no 18 certificate or equivalent here so games with mature content risk falling foul of the censors. It happened with Fallout 3 last year*, and apparently this was largely because the game included the use of morphine (despite other games also referencing morphine) and some real world negative effects on the player characters such as addiction.

... Australian Gamer managed to get its hands on the OFLC’s report for Fallout 3. The ban had nothing to do with decapitation, gore or dismemberment. It was the drugs, and only the drugs. I should be shocked, but all I can do is shake my head. And shake it hard.

From the report:

The game contains the option to take a variety of “chems” using a device which is connected to the character’s arm. Upon selection of the device a menu selection screen is displayed. Upon this screen is a list of “chems” that the player can take, by means of selection. These “chems” have positive effects and some negitave effects (lowering of intelligence, or the character may become addicted to the “chem”). The positive effects include increase in strength, stamina, resistance to damage, agility and hit points.

Corresponding with the list of various “chems” are small visual representation of the drugs, these include syringes, tablets, pill bottles, a crack-type pipe and blister packs. In the Board’s view these realistic visual representations of drugs and their delivery method bring the “science-fiction” drugs in line with “real-world” drugs.

The report then states that “material promoting or encouraging proscribed drug use” is grounds enough to refuse classification. Furthermore, the use of morphine is highlighted, as well as its in-game effect: allowing the player to ignore damage.

Wait, doesn’t Call of Cthulu on Xbox have a similar morphine mechanic? It does indeed. What rating did the OFLC give it? An MA 15+.

As a lot of readers have mentioned, Half-Life constantly refers to the use of morphine. Yet, by the same guidelines, the OFLC gave the 1998 title an MA 15+. While the OFLC has no control over the guidelines - that’s up to the Attorney-General’s department - it does determine how they’re applied.

I think in Fallout 3’s case it was the addictive qualities of in-game drugs like Jet and Mentats and their visual representation, combined with the “morphine” mention, that pushed Fallout 3 into RC territory.

Not only that but what's the problem with morphine used in game to ignore damage? What's it used for in the real world? Pain relief. Not exactly poles apart, and not unusual either - I've had morphine myself in hospital** and been prescribed other opiates. So what's the fucking big deal?

Ah well, no matter now since the position of the OFLC, their patronizing view of Australian gamers and the lack of an appropriate classification*** meant that the game was altered worldfuckingwide just to appease those who protect what they presumably think of as a nation of big fucking sooks.

So, what's the problem with Risen? Drugs again? Well, yes, in part - from the ITWire article linked to above (my bold):

Many of the characters in the game smoke a fictional drug called “brugleweed.” The “wood reefer” plant is described as having a mild relaxing effect on users, and can be bought, sold, and used by players. Some profanity (e.g., “f*ck” and “sh*t”) can be heard in the dialogue.

Oh noes, rude words and something that has a "mild relaxing effect" on characters in the game but has far less effect than even that in the real world because it's fucking made up. The sky is falling, the sky is falling. Yeah, okay that quote is from a US censorship body, but from the ITWire article it seems that the OFLC have similar views.

Hello OFLC, did Pulp Fiction get a theatrical and DVD release here? You know, that film where every second sentence seems to contain motherfucker and John Travolta shoots heroin into his arm and Uma Thurman snorts the fucking stuff thinking that it was cocaine? Or Platoon, the Vietnam War movie where there's a bunch of soldiers having a big hash party and Charlie Sheen gets off his dial sucking smoke from a gun barrel, and which also features plenty of soldierly Anglo-Saxon? Oh, I forgot. There is a rating to label movies for 18s and over (for what that's worth - see the last footnote). But not for games, and because censorship and the OFLC is a product of both Federal and State governments it seems unlikely to change as long as this guy is about (see this interview linked from the ITWire article):

MB: Have you had a chance to play with the South Australian Attorney General yet? [Michael Atkinson is the AG most vehemently opposed to the introduction of a R18+ classification for interactive entertainment in Australia]

TC: No, well, ha ha, this fellow is of course the problem, he has been interviewed whilst playing games before, but clearly this is a guy that doesn’t get it, and to be honest, I don’t think, ever will get it. So the battle is unlikely to be won while this gentleman is the Attorney General of, I am embarrassed to say, my home state.

Right, so ignoring the mildly relaxing drug, which might as easily be an analogue for tobacco - still legal, at least as of this fucking morning - as anything else, and the coarse language that seems no worse than what you can hear on TV after 9pm or so, is there anything else that the OFLC got bent out of shape about? Yep, prostitution.

During the course of the game, players can interact with prostitutes (referred to as “whores” in the game) at a local brothel. Players can trigger a lengthy dialogue to engage in their services; sexual activity is strongly implied, but never depicted on screen.

Prostitution and brothels. So let's get this perfectly straight, because it features prostitution and brothels this game has been banned by the official censor of a country that has largely fucking LEGALIZED prostitution and brothels. And not only is it legal to run, own or use a brothel and bang away at the prostitutes who work in them to your heart's (or any other organ's) content, they can advertise. In the inner Melbourne suburb of Kew this advert caused a stir three years ago, but it was legal.

Apparently complaints were rejected at the time because the advert treated the sex and sexuality very subtly, although 18 months ago it had been changed to an advert that simply read "Melbourne's Best Brothel".

Yeah! Go and fuck yourself, Subtlety.

Now is it me, or does the decision to ban a game for something that is not only legal in real life but openly advertised seem just a little inconsistent? I'm not much of a gamer and can't even remember the last time the Playstation was switched on, so my life is pretty unaffected by this stupidity. But for fuck's sake, I thought I'd moved to a country of independent minded and self reliant people who can think for themselves. Actually I still do think that, but if that is indeed the case then what the fuck do we need these moralizing bansturbation happy self-important patronizing suppositories of all wisdom telling the rest of us what, in their opinion, we can cope with?

* Not that Fallout 3 was the first either.

** Or possibly, I've been told, diamorphine. I don't know the difference except that one is almost heroin and the other pretty much is heroin, I didn't ask for it and I don't know why I was given it except that they probably thought I was going to hurt like hell. I just came out from anaesthesia feeling even less with it than expected, and was told that this was because of the morphine. My addiction as measured by my urge to go and get some heroin or other opiates is precisely zero, so I'm pretty sure I could have seen the unaltered for the OFLC (and its child like view of adult Australians) version of Fallout 3 without being corrupted and turning into Renton.

*** Which is a poor fucking solution anyway. Arbitrary lines such as age limits are never satisfactory since people mature at different rates. Some that are below the age specified will be mature enough and some that are old enough in law will not - it's as simple as that. But rather than allowing young adults to demonstrate individually, probably with some parental oversight, that they're responsible enough to drive a car or buy a drink or even to play a computer game with a lot of adult themes, we have this ridiculous situation where the law frequently assumes some magical maturity switch is thrown a nanosecond after midnight on the appropriate birthday.

Hannah Cyrus Miley Montana pole dances...

... and the huge tragedy of it is that it's somehow newsworthy.

For fuck's sake what the hell is going on with The Telegraph?

Dennis the just a bit odd and mildly irritating.

Dennis the Menace has had a politically correct makeover:

Dennis The Menace has been banned from using his catapult, water pistol and peashooter in a new BBC series, according to reports.

Christ, give me fucking strength. Look, I'm not sitting here reminiscing about a fondly remembered character from my childhood but why not simply ditch the character altogether? Why re-write a character called Dennis the Menace in such a way as to neuter the menace part of it? It's either writers that are too fucking lazy to come up with something original or another example of this revisionist thing so beloved of the Righteous that gives me the shits.

... rather than terrorise characters including Walter The Softy, he will get into scrapes by dreaming up contraptions that cause mayhem...

Sound menacing? I'd say Dennis the Hopeless Dreamer, or Dennis the Slightly Weird Annoying Crank?

... including turning faithful pet dog Gnasher into a cleaning device.

Dennis the Heath Robinson Designer? Dennis the Inappropriate And Possibly Cruel Pet Owner?

He has also been redrawn to look less menacing, with his usual scowl replaced with a boyish grin.

Sounds like Dennis the Gormless Softcock.

Red Kite, the production company behind the new series said on their website: "Dennis and Gnasher believe the world is truly their oyster and that kids should make the rules. They are active, creative and possess a charming, cheeky self-confidence which gets them both into and out of trouble!"

Yeah, fuck knuckles, that just sounds soooooo fucking menacing... not. What's Dennis the Cheeky And Creative going to do to menace me? Ruin the garden with a well placed finger painting? Destroy the neigbourhood peace by playing some ethnic style percussion on a home made xylophone that sounds like it was tuned by someone with deafening tinnitus and a single digit IQ?

"Dennis can't be seen to use weapons and giving other kids grief in a BBC cartoon. The BBC doesn't want to be accused of encouraging children to be violent."
When the BBC initially announced the new cartoon, they said they wished to appeal to the modern "iPod" generation.

Then fucking write something new, you lazy cunts.

Come to Australia this summer.

Julia's blog about a gang using a snake to attack their victim prompted me to leave a Crocodile Dundee inspired comment ("that's not a snake - THIS is a snake") linked to one of the less welcome wildlife of central Oz, which in turn got Julia talking about something even worse. Something which, if anecdotes are to believed*, is venomous enough to occasionally make even heavily sedated people scream in agony on their way to the bright white light: the box jellyfish. And the only possible answer to that has to be the Scared Weird Little Guys:



Not that the wildlife is the only thing you need to worry about.



Tourism Australia hopes you enjoy your stay and would ask that you try to spend all your money before you're stung/eaten/bashed or otherwise killed to death.


* Yes, I realize that this may be bullshit for tourists and newcomers.

A question for the Daily Fail.

Actually a question the Daily Fail should have fucking asked before it printed this:

Only 20 years left? Sensational pictures of Australia's Great Barrier Reef bring home the natural treasure we look to lose.

...

A recent report by marine scientist Charlie Veron claimed that global warming will destroy the World Heritage site within just 20 years.
The former chief scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science says that CO2 levels have risen so much it is now impossible to save the natural structure.
'There is no way out, no loopholes,' he said. 'The Great Barrier Reef will be over within 20 years or so.'

Twenty years, huh? That's a nice hard prediction we can come back to in the future to add to Gore's prediction that the North Pole will be ice free in five, ooops that was August 2008, so just four years actually. Oh, and the one hundred months to save the planet that the Prince of Wailing was going on about not so long ago. Except of course that time has moved on and it's eighty-eight months now. I hope we're all marking our calendars.

And the marine expert is not alone in his gloomy predictions - nor the most extreme.
Sir David Attenborough warned at a meeting of wildlife experts in July that all of the world’s tropical reefs face ‘imminent destruction’ unless CO2 levels are slashed.
Hopes that cutting emissions will be enough to save our natural world have been dashed by marine experts. They say we must now find ways to remove gas already in the atmosphere.
As well as their exceptional beauty, coral reefs are one of the richest eco-systems in the sea, providing homes to over a million species.
Their abundant life is a valuable source of food for millions of people and provides thousands of jobs by supporting a huge tourism industry.
But the precious structures, built by a battery of tiny organisms called corals polyps, are especially vulnerable to man’s impact on the environment.
Slow increments in levels of CO2 are gradually making the oceans more acidic and dissolving coral in the process.
And temperature rises caused by the same emissions are bleaching the coral, as the beauty fades.

So, to the question the Fail missed the opportunity to ask what others asked over six months ago: given that corals have existed for about half a billion years and also that both CO2 levels and temperatures have been much higher in the past, how come there are any corals at all to worry about now? No, come on, someone explain to me how corals, if they're that fucking delicate, survived temperatures getting on for 10˚C higher and CO2 levels ten times greater than now. I assume we can dismiss the idea that corals have in fact been extinct for longer than the dinosaurs and are really figments of our imagination, so what does that leave? Seems to me that either corals have become much less hardy and less adaptable creatures than they were in the past or they have mechanisms to survive such changes and we're crapping ourselves for no good reason. Again.

Times poll.

Has Britain become a surveillance society? 96% think so. I wonder why that is.


UPDATE: Massively out doing the Chinese at it too and, not to put too fine a point on it, the very idea would probably have given Erich Honecker such a hard on that the bastard's bell end would have invaded West Germany on it's own.

That's that then.

No comeback after all. If only Mandelsnake's comebacks were that brief.

Couldn't happen to a nicer person.

Normally I wouldn't be pleased to hear that some poor sod's had their car vandalized - I've been on the receiving end of that a couple or three times and it's a pain in the arse. You have to get repairs sorted out, you lose the insurance excess, it puts your premiums up if it happens again unless you're lucky enough to have a very understanding insurer, and so on. As I said, it's a pain in the arse so normally, normally, I'd be full of sympathy for anyone who has had, to paraphrase Vincent Vega, some bastard fuck with their wheels.

Normally.....

Bwahahahaahahahaahahahaaahahaahahahahaha.

UPDATE: I notice on the ITN/MEN video below that the car is on double yellows. What do we reckon? Parked there because she's too important to take notice of rules the rest of us are expected to adhere to? Or daft enough to drive off with four flat tyres, or at least daft enough not to raise any objection to hubby or someone else taking the chance that all four wheels won't slide out of the rubber on a corner? Either way, I think her constituents should be telling her to fuck off. If she's not too greedy and too ready to feather her nest for Salford's tastes she's either too daft or too self important as well. Actually my money would be on all three.

Raised fingers.

"Doot doot"... goes the text message tone on my phone as I'm watching the end of Friday night Aussie Rules. Apparently England are all out. Already? What the fuck just happened? Has the monocular moron sent them a good luck card or something? Oh well, if England can keep it up I can stop worrying about being spat on in the street.

Quote of the week.

From The Times:

First secretary Mandelson, now running the government in the absence of any other intelligent life form...

Such remarks are pretty much expected now when speaking of Gordon Clown, but I think it says something about the rest of the Cabinet, especially the postal pretender.

Twats, the lot of them.

Charming woman.

Baby P's mother inside prison:

The 28-year-old, who was jailed fo a minimum of five years in May for causing or allowing the toddler's death, said she looks forward to getting drunk and having sex when she leaves prison.
In a series of letters written from her cell at Holloway prison, the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, also describes her life behind bars.
Writing to a friend in one letter, she said: "I tell ya [sic], when I get out, I'm in no rush to get in a relationship with a man again, but I might have fun playing the field and travelling! (one long party).
"Hope you're going to join in the party."
...
"Plus I hope to get out of London as this place has been a living hell for me since I was very little."
She also complains of her lack of a sex life in jail, adding: "I need sex like a heroin addict needs a fix.
"I look forward to going out and I bet we will have a right laugh."

Lovely. In turn I, and I'm sure plenty of other people, hope to hear that you inadvertently nailed your own twat shut in the prison workshop the day before you're due to be released.