A little light failure from The Teletubbygraph

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Please, someone give the photo drones at The Telegraph an atlas for Christmas, or at least help them download Google Earth and show them how to work it. At the rate it's going downhill and screwing up junior school level stuff I'm going to have to stop taking the piss out of The Daily Mail.

Fellas, there's no such place as Forrest Act, but there is a suburb called Forrest in the ACT. This isn't 'Act' being shouted. It stands for Australian Capital Territory. Saying Forrest Act is like saying Port Augusta Sa or Newcastle Nsw or even, to use something the photo drones may have heard of, Washington Dc. Let me put it another way:

Got it, photo drones?

And yes, David and Janean Richards are in the Forrest that's in the ACT because a few seconds on Google found them mentioned in The Canberra Times, so I reckon we can be pretty sure it's not some weird town called Forrest Act since Forrest ACT is within spitting distance of Parliament House. See?

Er... do you think the photo drones know that Sydney isn't the capital?

Advanced calculus for journalists - UPDATED

Lesson #1:

4 ≠ 3

Police said a 32-year-old Derrimut man was taken to the Royal Melbourne Hospital with fractures, while a 27-year-old Taylors Hill woman and a Richmond man and woman - both believed by paramedics to be aged 19 - were transported to the Sunshine Hospital with minor injuries.
An Ambulance Victoria spokesman said another man who was injured refused to be treated.

It doesn't equal 5 either.


UPDATE - Lesson #2, from Professor Bucko of the Department of Inadvisable Cervid Power Modifications:

First up we have the story of an unexpectedly low turnout of Christmas shoppers this weekend.

Immediately following that we have the story of an unexpectedly high turnout this weekend.

Less is less. More is more. Less is not more.

Hopefully these aren't too difficult for the subeditors to keep up with.

Seeing the light

Click for linky

Shoulder mounted laser? Wow, like the fucking Predator. We'll show those little pond-life estate scum next time they get a bit fighty, eh lads? What they gonna do when we've each got a las... er... oh.

Expect laws restricting the purchase of welding goggles and mirrors to be around the corner, affecting only the law-abiding, non-rioting majority who won't simply steal them when they want them.

/ facepalm

Sloppy filter

I haven't blogged on the proposed webnanny/internet filter/Great Firewall of Australia plans down here for a while because things have gone a bit quiet. There have been enough colours nailed to masts, reputations staked and interests vested that I'm not all that hopeful that sense has been seen, particularly when it needs to be seen by a Communications Minister whose paternalist streak might be coming from both religious beliefs and leftie-ness, but it may be that it's been realised that a filter that promised much and failed to deliver would be worse than none at all. And I'm quite confident it would fail. Much of the illegal stuff is being shared by P2P anyway, and the filters proponents were forced to admit almost from the start that it couldn't do a thing about that. And then there's TORs and VPNs - basically it'll affect people who don't google for a way around the filter before the thing goes up, which is more or less everybody that doesn't need a filter because they won't be searching the web for baboon porn or whatever in the first place.

More interesting if you're a baboon, I imagine

But it's not just that because ISP level filters will be under attack from the other side too, as TalkTalk in the UK and some of its customers have found out.

Britain’s third-largest broadband provider has been promoting its new “HomeSafe” security product to its 4.1 million subscribers as a way of blocking pornography, viruses and other potentially harmful content.
Unlike the child safety products offered by other providers, it operates at the network level so parents do not need to install or maintain any software. The approach has attracted praise from MPs and campaigners seeking to restrict the availability of pornography on the web.
But for more than a week the system has failed to restrict access to Pornhub, which offers thousands of free explicit videos and is ranked as the third largest pornography provider on the web.
The failure was discovered by Cherith Hately, an IT expert and mother of three teenagers in south London, who tested the service last week. She found that on the Pornhub website the HomeSafe blocking page had been relegated to a small box normally reserved for advertising, leaving its adult content fully accessible.
“The ‘you have been blocked’ page has been diverted to an advertising slot within the Pornhub homepage thus opening access to it,” she said.
“The HomeSafe barrier has been knocked down, technically and literally. TalkTalk should inform all their HomeSafe customers that their children are still able to see pornography so that parents can supervise more.”

Far be it from me to tell me how to bring up your children, Cherith, and I'm sure you've already had the awkward conversation with your teens about which one had visited that site, but I'd say that parents should take this as an indication that the best filter system is the parents themselves.

A spokesman for TalkTalk acknowledged the failure and said technicians were working on a fix. He was unable to say whether the HomeSafe system had been deliberately circumvented by pornographers.

Perhaps not, but it occurs to me that if it had been to circumvent another filter that worked the same way it could affect TalkTalk too. In the Aussie context since what the nannies want is effectively ISP level filtering under government supervision all ISPs would have the same filter, and when a website manages something similar to what Pornhub's done to TalkTalk's HomeSafe this single point of failure would mean it won't affect just Telstra or iiNet or Optus customers - it'll be everyone. Hardly the end of the world because we'll be about where we are right now, but it does make the whole exercise seem a bit pointless.

“As the only network-level filter, TalkTalk’s HomeSafe is the most effective way of protecting children from content parents consider harmful,” the spokesman said.

No, I repeat: parents are the most effective way of protecting children from harmful content. The filter can't unplug the computer, withhold their pocket money or threaten to stop paying the broadband bill so there's no service whatsoever. But it can create a false sense of security.

“While no technical solution alone is able to solve the issue of child internet safety or be a substitute for parental supervision, we firmly believe that HomeSafe is a step in the right direction.”

Providing that false sense of security doesn't take over leading parents to assume that the filter is doing its job and little or no supervision is necessary, because when you concede that there's no substitute for parental supervision that would be a step in the wrong direction. Not that Britain's nannies are any more clued up about that than Australia's.

Under government pressure the rest of the big four internet providers – BT, Virgin Media and Sky – recently agreed to offer all new customers software to restrict which websites children are able to access, but stopped short of implementing network-level filters.
TalkTalk’s approach is meanwhile supported by the campaigners, and MPs including Claire Perry, a Conservative backbencher who is leading a parliamentary inquiry into online child protection. As well as network-level filters she wants broadband providers to switch them on by default.
“When I started campaigning to make access to internet pornography an 'opt-in', many industry experts said it was technologically impossible to provide a network-level filter,” Mrs Perry said.

You idiot. Of course it's impossible, we've just bloody seen that. This looks like it was circumvented at the other end without any effort on the part of the person sitting at home, and it's not like the person sitting at home doesn't have ways and means anyway. Look, I can't put it any better than an Australian blogger, Stilgherrian, put it nearly four years ago (my bold):

Real-world experience in everything from spam filters to the record industry’s futile attempts to stop copyright violations always shows that filters only block casual users. Professionals, the desperate or the persistent will always get through.

However if a politician demands a filter, pretty soon a shiny-suited salesman will appear, ready to sell him a box with “filter” written on the front. It’ll work — well enough for the demo, anyway.

“Look, Minister! Nice Minister. Watch the screen. See? Filter off, bad website is visible. Filter on, bad website gone. Filter off. Child in danger. Filter on. Child happy and safe. Filter off. Voter afraid and angry. Filter on. Voter relaxed and comfortable. Cheque now please.”

When elected nannies like Stephen Conroy here and Claire Perry in the UK wrap their heads around this and stop spunking taxpayers' money at things which at best will work until someone defeats them and at worst will never work at all they might start giving out useful advice. Advice along the lines of: the government can't stop your kids from seeing tits and arses and rooting baboons online...

... but if you get off your arse and look at what they're doing you can.

Hardly a ringing endorsement for Kyoto type polices

Click for linky

Global carbon emissions reach record 10 billion tonnes, an increase of almost 50 per cent in the last two decades, according to the team at the University of East Anglia (UEA).

I'm not going to go into the University of Email Context and the less said the better about beginning an article with an opening sentence that reads more like a headline.* Instead I'll just note that the Kyoto Protocol was supposed to stabilise atmospheric levels of some 'greenhouse gases' by reducing emissions, that it was bloody expensive, and that emissions went up anyway. In other words even if you buy into the argument that CO₂ emissions are a problem the solution, although to be fair it was touted as an initial step, has been an abject failure.

And in case that's not convincing a few days ago a post appeared on Watts Up With That entitled 'What Didn't Kyoto Do?' which made a similar point with some interesting additions.

The entire goal of Kyoto was to drop total country emissions (not per capita emissions) to 1990 levels. Since the population has gone up since 1990, to drop total emissions back down to 1990 levels means that per capita emissions have to drop even further, to well below 1990 levels. Kyoto was supposed to encourage the EU folks to undertake some serious reductions of emissions.

But at the end of the day, despite all of the noise and all of the fury, the US did a better job at reducing per capita emissions (down 14% compared to the 1990 values) than the EU27 did (down 12% compared to the 1990 values).

It is also interesting to compare the absolute values of the changes. In the EU27 with Kyoto, the emissions dropped since 1990 by 1.1 tonnes per capita. Remember that this includes Germany, which artificially decreased the average emissions. Bear in mind as well that one effect of Kyoto was to move energy-intensive industries outside the EU27, which also artificially decreased emissions.

In the USA without Kyoto, emissions dropped since 1990 by more than twice as much, a reduction of 2.8 tonnes per capita. The US had no Kyoto incentives and punishments, didn’t drive out energy-intensive industry, and despite all of that had larger emission reductions, both in absolute and in percentage terms, than the EU27. Go figure.

Indeed, but that's only the half of it.

Meanwhile, Chinese emissions went up, not down but up, by a whopping 4.6 tonnes per capita … and there’s a whole lot more capitas in China than there are capitas in the US and EU27 combined. China by itself wiped out all the gains of the EU27, and all the gains of the US, and turned them all into a net increase. And that’s just China, doesn’t include Brazil and India and all the rest of the developing world.

So, hands up everyone who's for more of the same? Those who've profited so handsomely off the back of Kyoto I don't need to answer.

* Telegraph readers may guess that the article is by Louise Gray without following the link, and they probably won't be surprised to hear that the photo beneath the subhead about carbon emissions shows some cooling towers emitting water vapour.

A question for the public sector strikers

Yeah, but why is it that for most people you can only get one if you join the public sector?

Can Cameron really be this stupid?

Click for linky

Dave? Do you think that this might possibly have something to do with the fact that you haven't stopped spunking away money by the billion as fast as you can tax it off of the current workforce and borrow it on behalf of their children? Fucking hellfire, in the last couple of days we're told that you've blown half a billion on the Northern Rock sale, granted perhaps unavoidably, and that you've decided to throw almost the same again at the building industry while underwriting all the mortgages of first time buyers. Not only have you not cut public spending you're actually spending even more than Labour did, and incidentally failed to get the public sector to stop thinking of that as a cut as well as failed to get them to stop hiring for bullshit jobs instead of people who actually provide useful services. You've carried on taking money that could have paid down some of the UK's eye watering debt and handing it to the EU, IMF and international aid, and you've continued Labour's wars at significant cost and embarked on a military adventure of your own. The bonfire of the quangos was at best a barbecue of a handful of them - one of those small barbecues made of thick tinfoil that you get from petrol stations, and for which you probably paid in cash and told the attendant to keep the change from a million quid. And you've failed to create growth because you've refused to provide the conditions for it to occur. That's just off the top of my head and I'm sure I could think of more given time and find out more still if I started looking. And here you are scratching your arse - it apparently being interchangeable with your head - and wondering why the plan's not working.

I'll tell you why, David. It's because it's basically the same fucking plan that Gordon Brown was using, you hopelessly inept cunt. How the hell did Britain come to this? It's had some dim politicians and not a few dim PMs, but how in Christ's name did it get landed with you: a PM whose extraordinary dimness must surely result from being so dense that light can't escape if it falls into his head? It's not madness that is doing the same thing and expecting different results, it's stupidity. And that's actually the generous alternative because if I thought you knew what the fuck you were doing I'd be describing you as evil.

I hate to go all Private Frasier again, but if these fuckwits aren't dragged out and chained to something solid where they can't do any harm - the Lusitania for example - I really do think the UK is doomed.

Come back, Gordon Brown... UPDATED

All is not forgiven by any means, not even remotely. But when the Cobbleition are doing things that are just as stupid as those Gordon Clown himself did there's a case to be made that you might as well put the lurching, snot munching, cyclopean horror with the faecal Midas touch back in charge and be bloody done with it.

The Prime Minister and his deputy, Nick Clegg, will unveil proposals to help first-time buyers of new homes by carrying part of the risk of their mortgages.

Dave, Nick, say it ain't so. Tell us that even you aren't so monumentally stupid that you can't see that it's precisely this kind of policy - using taxpayers' money to underwrite loans for overpriced housing to people who are at higher risk of being unable to repay them - that led with grim inevitability to the fucking subprime mortgage crisis in the fucking first place. And what did that lead to in its turn? Oh, yes, that'd be adding to an unsustainable bubble with a bonus prize of a banking crisis, wouldn't it? And you two freak shows are now standing here telling us that you want to fucking do it all over again in the deluded belief it'll get the economy moving. Folks, I think this year's Jeff Buckley Award for being the Public Figure Most Hopelessly Out of Their Depth may end up being shared.

They also propose subsidising the construction of 16,000 homes by giving £400 million of taxpayers’ money to property developers.

Oh, why not just round it up to a neat half billion? It's only money, after all, and of course you don't need to worry because it's not yours anyway. Listen, you morons, every bloody pound of subsidies - every penny the government spends, in fact - is a pound that must be taken off someone's disposable income either now or in the future. You're taking money away from people who might otherwise be able to put it towards the deposit for a house, d'you see? Or a car, or a meal out, or a newspaper or any number of things. They might even decide to stick it in the bank and save it if someone gives them an interest rate that can't be described as comical. Now tell me I'm wrong but if you want the housing market to pick up does it really make sense to take money away from people who need it to buy houses with? The very people that are currently worrying you because they're not buying houses because lenders aren't all that happy with the risks at the moment? Dave, Nick, please try to understand this: more disposable income + lower house prices = more houses being sold. Okay? And conversely less disposable income + higher house prices = ... want to take a guess? Do you see now, you pair of utter fucktroons?

And pardon me for asking, but what the hell does the government need the housing market to pick up for anyway? It was overpriced. It still is. It doesn't need 'unblocking' like it's a toilet that Gordon Clown and his badger faced sock puppet left bunged up after a particularly nasty dump - it needs the very correction you idiots are trying to forestall. Nobody disputes that the British economy needs reviving, but if there's a lesson to be learned from the last government, and Christ knows there's more than just one, surely it's that an economy that's running on a spending boom fuelled by a combination of cheap credit and appreciating house prices making people feel richer than they really are is not an economy that will run indefinitely before hitting trouble. Yet, Dave and Nick, this seems to be pretty much what you want to do.

In a further move, ministers are working on a scheme under which billions of pounds of money in pension funds will be used to finance the construction of power stations, wind turbines and roads.

What? WHAT? WHAT? Are you fucking serious? On top of everything else have you two started channelling Robert Maxwell or something?

Treasury sources said talks had been conducted with pension fund managers for months. They are hoping to attract managers to invest in infrastructure schemes because they provide a better rate of return than government bonds.

Oh, no shit? And the Cobbleition government, unlike its predecessors of all stripes, has suddenly got good at picking winners and reckons that the best investments around at the moment happen to be the things that it does and taxes people for because... uh, because there's rarely profit to be made in them.* Oh well, at least they're not talking about using Labour's idea of helping themselves to money in old accounts, even if that's probably just because they've already cleaned them out.

Look, Dave and Nick, the government already lighten the pockets of the British motorist to the tune of some £45-50 billion, in return for which about a fifth of that is spent on the roads, and now you want to fill in the few zillion potholes you've missed with the contents of their pension funds? Oh, and erect a few more bird mincing white elephants that are, to use Malcolm Tucker's phrase, as much use as a marzipan dildo, and so uneconomic that nobody in their right mind would build even one if not given someone else's money to offset the otherwise certain losses. And no, I'm not just saying that because Phil the Greek thinks so. Might I suggest that if you want more to be spent on road maintenance and other infrastructure (but not bird mincers) you stop spending money somewhere else? It's called living within your means, which is a concept that even plankton in the oceanic depths could probably wrap what passes for their heads around - in the depressingly likely event that you can't find anyone in Whitehall who understands go out and find a real person to explain it to you.

As for power stations, again I feel there is a lesson that should have been learned from the Labour years - just get out of the bloody way and let someone build the fucking things. Seriously, it's not like a power station doesn't produce something that people need and for which a ready market exists - Christ, even wind turbines have got that much going for them, they just can't produce it steadily and reliably - so there should be a return on building them providing the initial costs aren't prohibitive. That means not having interminable inquiries before graciously allowing someone to begin work on building something that people need, and then telling them to stop again because some middle class white kid with dreadlocks and a dream of erasing the memory of the silver (plated) spoon by not washing has found a pond, and look, there's like all tadpoles in it, dude. It means, as I mentioned, the government doing it's best just to get out of the fucking way.

Separately, Lord Heseltine, who advises the Government on growth, said MPs should waive through critically important infrastructure projects to get the economy moving.

It pains me to agree with a man who still wants Britain to sign up to the currency version of Heaven's Gate but that's kind of the thing I'm on about, though as an aside this isn't:

The former Cabinet minister said the Government could work with Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, to agree on which major projects to push through.

Yes, very good, Michael, a government of literally all the twats. Wonderful. Nurse! He's out of bed again.

But really, why not? The Cobbleition really are as bad as Labour, and we all know Labour were pretty shocking. But I've lost count of the number of times I've ranted and raved and railed at some new piece of pettiness or authoritarianism or nannying or incompetence or lack of backbone (especially with regard to the EU) or just plain epic fuckwittery. I've lost count how often I've said that it's just like Labour never left office. I even began this rant with the observation that if this is what Dave and Nick want to do then Britain might as well give up and bring back Gordon Brown to finish the demolition job he started. And if all the main parties are bent on Britain's self destruction and disagree only on the speed at which it should happen, if the only long term hope is to rebuild from the ashes, then it's starting to look to me like the petrol and matches and matches may as well be given to the worst nutter of the lot.

The alternative, of course, is to get rid of the whole bloody lot of them and replace them with sane people, but for some reason this doesn't seem to have very broad appeal in the UK. I'm sure the millions attached firmly to the tax tit and the millions more brainwashed to believe that this is how it has to be haven't got anything to do with it.

'Kinell!


UPDATE - Trust The Daily Mash to get to the essence of it.

The prime minister said: "This package will help to reinflate the house price bubble and give mortgages to people who can't really afford them. Unless anyone has any better ideas?"

Wonderful caption on the picture, too: "If it's broke fix it with the thing that broke it."

I feel like Private Frasier.

UPADTE 2 - Also blogged superbly and without all the swearing over at Counting Cats in Zanzibar.

* That often there's rarely profit to be made precisely because government is involved probably doesn't occur to them.

Quote of the Day

Yes, another one, and again it comes from the pen/keyboard of the Carbon Sense Coalition's Viv Forbes and via the Real World Libertarian. My bold:

Since July, temperatures in Australia have soared by over six degrees centigrade. If current trends continue, we can expect another three degrees of warming by Christmas.

This rapid warming has caused massive environmental disruption – alpine snow has melted, birds are migrating, there is an epidemic of weeds and we can expect more storms, cyclones, floods, mosquitoes and solar radiation burns.

This is far more serious than the UN's forecast of a piddling 1-2 degrees of warming over the next hundred years or so.

What caused this dangerous new global warming?

The old people called it "summer".

A perfect storm of stupid - UPDATED

So we've just had the Greens' carbon tax rammed through with the support of the minority Labor government, and now it's the plain tobacco packaging, which I read...

...will pass the Senate with the support of the Greens.

Is it speculative to wonder if the price for supporting Labor's pointless plain fag packets - pointless not least because it follows recently introduced laws that generally prevent the fucking packets being on display anyway - was the carbon tax and vice versa?

Who knows? But what I am very confident of is that these two pieces of legislation, one extremely divisive and the other egregiously illiberal, will each achieve as near to nothing as makes no odds.

"If this legislation stops one young Australian from picking up a shiny, coloured packet and prevents them becoming addicted to cigarettes then in my view it will have been worthwhile," Labor senator John Faulkner told the upper house today.

It won't. Hell's bells, I'm getting tired of saying this, but just look at the illegal drug trade. Just fucking look at it. Do they have trademarks? Do they have shiny, coloured packets? No. Does the trade have any difficulty in retaining customers? No, but of course the nanny screams of "Addiction!" will be starting any second, so let's ask a different question. Does the drugs trade have any difficulty attracting new business despite the complete lack of trademarks and shiny, coloured packets? Again the answer is no. And the reason is that people want to take the bloody stuff. No, I don't particularly get the attraction either, but there's a very good chance that someone somewhere in this very suburb is getting wasted right now and we all know that whatever s/he's on came in some kind of plain and most likely ad hoc packaging. Hell, even illegal chop-chop tobacco already comes in plain packaging, and I'm sure the suppliers are just delighted that their main competition, the legal and regulated tobacco trade, are taking one in the crotch and losing one more thing that distinguishes the legal from the illegal product. And, er, correct me if I'm wrong but they don't even pay tax, do they? Christ, they must think all their Christmases came at once.

Via the Real World Libertarian

And if in return for that utter pointlessness, unless the idea really is to benefit the criminal tobacco trade, Labor brought in the carbon tax for the Greens it doesn't seem to me to be any more likely to achieve anything noticeable. As I mentioned the other day other countries seem quick to praise Australia for the carbon tax but oh so reluctant to follow suit, and with such a small population we could cut emissions to nothing at the cost of utterly destroying the economy and going back to being a pre-industrial society, and the self-sacrifice would have a measurable effect on the climate of zero. And that's making the assumption that the whole warble gloaming catastrophism bandwagon isn't garbage to begin with. The reality is that we're on our own.

Earlier this week Climate Change Minister Greg Combet rejected the idea that there are serious issues with international carbon trading and yesterday spoke rosily about the global carbon market's prospects while the EU carbon price crashed.
To support his argument Combet cited the World Bank's Carbon Finance Unit State and Trends of the Global Carbon Market 2011 report that the market has now grown to $US140 billion ($136bn). But he's clearly only read it to recite convenient anecdotes.
According to the report "after five consecutive years of robust growth, the total value of the global carbon market stalled suffering from the lack of post-2012 regulatory clarity".
Meanwhile the price of some emissions permits "fell by double-digits for the third year in a row" and "shrank as well in 2010".
A carbon market recession should hardly come as a surprise.
[...]
Before its closure in the middle of last year, the price of voluntary Chicago carbon exchange permits plunged from $7.40 a tonne to a mere 5c.
And Europe's carbon price has not been in parity with Australia's $23 a tonne price since June and now sits at about $10 following a downward price trend.
As long as the EU's emissions trading scheme accounts for 97 per cent of the global carbon market, the price will be set in Europe and a price drop there will significantly influence whether emissions cuts will be achieved in Australia.

And as that article also points out, arguments between the industrialised and developing worlds over a replacement treaty for the Kyoto Accord, itself not credited with achieving a measurable temperature change as far as I've heard, are deadlocked on the issue of whether the developing world is included this time.

Worse, like the tobacco legislation, it seems that criminals are going to gain from this too, or at least have a bloody good try.

The Australian Federal Police is preparing to investigate cases of serious fraud that could arise from Labor's carbon pricing scheme, including the possible sale of bogus carbon credits.
The AFP's deputy commissioner of operations Andrew Colvin said a working group had been established with the Department of Climate Change to discuss possible responses to carbon tax breaches.
Appearing before a Senate committee hearing today, Mr Colvin said the AFP's efforts would focus on serious fraud offences, particularly those involving the sale of counterfeit carbon permits or credits.

And of course they're quite right to if experience elsewhere is any guide.

Click for link - H/T to WUWT

So to recap, what we've got here is a couple of bits of legislation that will attract and likely benefit criminals, add to the workloads of the police, and achieve two-fifths of fuck all. But on the upside they're ideologically sound, keep wealthy lobby groups onside, and of course Australia gets to say it's leading the world even if the world isn't all that keen to follow.

Marvellous.

UPDATE - Coincidentally WUWT has a post looking at Kyoto’s effects which concludes that it did nothing in signatory countries that didn’t happen in the US too, and did quite a lot less than the financial crisis. Now, about that carbon tax, Jules and Bob…

Occupy everywhere - UPDATED

Via Simon Cooke, an interesting little fact that should make a lot of the Occupy mob, many of whom seem to be middle class and uni educated, reconsider their claim to represent the 99%.

The recent Occupy Wall Street protests (and their Occupy Sydney and Occupy Melbourne cousins) have aimed their message at the income disparity between the 1% richest and the rest of the country. But what happens when you expand that and look at the 1% richest of the entire world? Some really interesting numbers emerge....
[...]
In America, the top 1% earn more than $380,000 per year. In Australia, the top 3% of households earn more than $250,000 per week, according to the ABS. How much do you need to earn to be among the top 1% of the world?
$34,000.
That was the finding World Bank economist Branko Milanovic presented in his 2010 book The Haves and the Have-Nots. Going down the distribution ladder may be just as surprising. To be in the top half of the globe, you need to earn just $1,225 a year. For the top 20%, it’s $5,000 per year.[...]
It means Australians we consider poor are among some of the world’s most well-off. As Milanovic notes, “the poorest [5%] of Americans are better off than more than two-thirds of the world population.” Furthermore, “only about 3 percent of the Indian population have incomes higher than the bottom (the very poorest) U.S. percentile.”
In short, most of those protesting in the Occupy Wall Street movement would be considered wealthy — perhaps extraordinarily wealthy — by much of the world. Many of those protesting the 1% are, ironically, the 1%.

So to any Occupy folks, in the unlikely event any happen to be be reading this, perhaps you should pack up the tent and go re-erect it in your own gardens.* Not only will you be more representative by protesting against yourselves but no one will mind if you don't stay in the tent all night or use the bird bath as a lavatory.

UPDATE - Very belated recognition of a comment from a few weeks ago, this. Rational Anarchist made a very similar point on In Masho veritas? and referenced Tim Worstall writing for Forbes. Unfortunately RA's comment got sucked into the ID spam trap and I only just noticed today. Sorry, RA.


* 99% of people probably do not have 3G for a poor protestor's internet capable smartphone or a handy Starbucks providing a free wifi signal for their ≈$2,000 MacBook Pro and so could not be reading this from local equivalent of Wall Street, or the steps of St Paul's, or City Square, or Martin Place etc etc. Just a thought, that's all.

Failing at internet

Click for linky

Under the hashtag #mencallmethings, female bloggers, columnists and Twitter regulars have started reprinting some of the threats they say they receive daily from anonymous emailers, posters and other trolls.
While milder insults such as feminazi and ugly bitch are common, so, also were threats of rape and other violence. New Yorker Shelby Knox was told to "die in a fire". Guardian columnist Suzanne Moore said she "can't put here some stuff men write to me. It involves dismemberment, blood and excrement".
Prominent feminist blogger Jessica Valenti welcomed the #mencallmethings hashtag as a way of fighting back.

Anna Raccoon has already gone into this in depth and if you haven't already read it I do recommend nipping over and seeing what she had to say on it. All I'll say is firstly that those threats that clearly can't be followed through on are empty threats and therefore, while no doubt unpleasant, actually no real threat at all; secondly that I'm not sure this really is trolling (see Dizzy); and thirdly if it is trolling then it's worth remembering that the internet has a fairly long established procedure for dealing with trolls:

Now, hands up everyone who thinks repeating their spittle flecked ramblings on line under a slightly plaintive sounding hashtag like #mencallmethings instead of, say, #whatabunchofsoftcocks or #hahahayouwontrapeanyonewiththatlittlething, qualifies as not feeding the trolls.

Someone? Anyone? Anyone at all? No?

Questions to which the answer is "Fuck off"

Yes, I know there are lots of these and that anything on an official census probably qualifies, but the one that's uppermost in my mind at the moment is this:

How much do you drink?

A report to be published on Monday will say eight million professionals are routinely drinking too much alcohol, and endangering their health, even though they do not binge drink or get drunk.
It calls for new checks, so that GPs quiz all patients about their drinking habits, first at the age of 30, and again as part of general health checks which occur every five years from the age of 40.

And even though it's a non-issue for me and my honest answer would score maximum healthist brownie points, my inclination would be to choose from a range of replies starting with "Why are you asking?" and finishing with "Go fuck yourself." Aside from the intrusiveness I hope everyone can see in this that the concept of no-safe-level-every-drop-is-killing-you-a-bit has taken one more jackbooted step from neo-puritan idealism to policy. You don't have to binge and you don't have to get drunk, but you can still be drinking too much. How much is too much? Who can possibly know when, as pointed out on Devil's Kitchen a couple of years back, the recommended consumption levels for alcohol were pulled out of the collective arse of a working party of the Royal College of Physicians (the article is only available to people who pay The Times as even archives are behind the paywall now, so the rest of us have to put up with seeing it for free on Wayback - fuck you, Rupes).

Guidelines on safe alcohol consumption limits that have shaped health policy in Britain for 20 years were “plucked out of the air” as an “intelligent guess”.
The Times reveals today that the recommended weekly drinking limits of 21 units of alcohol for men and 14 for women, first introduced in 1987 and still in use today, had no firm scientific basis whatsoever.
[...]
The disclosure that the 1987 recommendation was prompted by “a feeling that you had to say something” came from Richard Smith, a member of the Royal College of Physicians working party that produced it.
He told The Times that the committee’s epidemiologist had confessed that “it’s impossible to say what’s safe and what isn’t” because “we don’t really have any data whatsoever”.
Mr Smith, a former Editor of the British Medical Journal, said that members of the working party were so concerned by growing evidence of the chronic damage caused by heavy, long-term drinking that they felt obliged to produce guidelines. “Those limits were really plucked out of the air. They were not based on any firm evidence at all. It was a sort of intelligent guess by a committee,” he said.

I'm not sure how a guess can be both intelligent and plucked out of the air, but really it's by the by. The point is that they have a number based on fuck all evidence and a vague feeling that the medical profession really ought have an answer, and if you exceed that number then you're drinking too much, end of discussion. Doesn't matter whether you're an enormous flanker type with the capacity to out-drink a small Moscow suburb or a five foot nothing woman who can get pissed on a glass of wine, you're drinking an amount which is officially unhealthy, and since a large glass of wine is three units on its own you certainly don't have to get sloshed to get there. Small wonder that some healthist think tank can found that 8 million people - about a fifth of the workforce overall and so a good chunk of the number of white collar jobs I suspect they mean by "professionals" -  are drinking too much. Christ, even if you just get tipsy once a week and that's not the only time you drank then you almost certainly had more than 21 units, although the current article implies that they've been raised slightly at some point.

Government advice states men should drink no more than four units a day and women no more than three.

Which despite being more over the course of a week is actually a subtle move towards further puritanism - it's still no more than a large glass of wine or a pint of medium beer per day for the ladies and a pint and a half of the same beer or maybe two pints of coloured water variety beer for the fellas. Even your openly teetotal and increasingly lightweight Exile could probably still drink two pints of piss-strength without being what anyone would really call drunk, and if I was going to make them last all day I seriously doubt I'd even feel it. That the goalposts have quietly been made so wide seems a little suspicious, and so I had a little Google and almost immediately I found a BBC article from August 09 that mentions the reason for the low daily limit rather than an even lower weekly one.

The 1987 sensible drinking limits, which set the bar at 21 units per week for men and 14 units per week for women, remained in place until 1995.
It was then that the government decided to switch the limits from weekly to daily in a bid to curb binge drinking and emphasise the harms of saving up a week's limit to blow in one or two sessions at the weekend - a decision it stands by today.

Which should be surprising only in that it was the previous Tory nannies rather than the Labour nannies or the current Cobbleition nannies who were behind the move. It certainly shouldn't be any surprise that after three different governments under four different PMs British drinkers are still being told to restrict themselves to the equivalent of two pints of fizzy piss a day in case they choose - and how dare, how very bloody dare they even think of choosing for themselves - to lay off the sauce during the week so they can make merry, or at least a little less miserable, at the weekend. Oh, except for British drinkers with breasts, who are to have no more than a pint and a half of fizzy piss, probably not even that if they've got children. Jesus, these days you could probably heave a brick at an Alcohol Concern meeting and hit half a dozen people who'd tell you it should be less even if someone hasn't got children but was in a slightly wistful and broody mood for half an hour or so around mid-afternoon. Yes, of course I'm being sarcastic but I'm afraid to Google again in case I also turn out to be right.

As an aside before returning to the current nannying there's one other thing in that 09 BBC article I'd like to draw attention to, which is that it was basically about neo-puritans getting their cocks in a knot because - you'll never guess, oh, fuck me sideways with a beer barrel, you just did already - the guidelines aren't tough enough and are fooling everyone into drinking too much.

Daily limits on alcohol consumption are meaningless and potentially harmful, experts have warned.
The government says men should drink no more than three to four units per day and women no more than two to three.
Liver specialist Dr Nick Sheron, of the Alcohol Health Alliance UK, says these limits were devised by civil servants with "no good evidence" for doing so.

Why should there be? There was no good evidence for the previous suggestions either, remember?

He says the advice runs the risk of people taking it to mean that it is safe to drink alcohol every day.

And the older advice risked people not drinking daily and having what the puritans doubtless regard as a skinful and what everyone else would think of as a few drinks at the weekend. Heads the nannies win, tails the drinkers lose.

Dr Sheron's comments follow a report by MPs on the Public Accounts Committee which suggested public confusion about safe drinking levels was fuelling problem drinking.

Of course it is. On Planet Righteous where the public naturally deals with any confusion by getting throughly shitfaced nearly anything can fuel problem drinking. Certainly anything that doesn't make it absolutely crystal clear that no level of alcohol... come on, everyone, you all know the words by now.

Dr Sheron says we should go back to using the old weekly limits, which are based on sound research.

Sound research? Do us a fucking favour, they were based on two fifths of fuck all. Calling it sound research is either ignorant of the Times article less than two years before in which someone who was actually there admits that they were made up, or is simply bullshit.

And from misleading, ah, sorry, confusing the public with arbitrary limits based on nothing much and other policy based evidence it's now suggested that GPs have yet another set of boxes to tick, along with a financial incentive to tick 'em, in the form of interrogating patients about their alcohol consumption and having a regular schedule of opportunities to do so. All backed up by a report with some numbers to make it sound justified, natch. And don't go thinking this is lefty do-gooders at work here (my bold).

The report, by 2020 Health, a centre-right think tank, says many middle class drinkers are not aware of the risks of their evening tipple...

See? This is nudge stuff. That (mostly) unspoken assumption that you don't know what's best for you, are incapable of finding out for yourself and understanding, and therefore can't be trusted make your own decisions on the matter. It's old style rightist paternalism of the kind the alleged Tory PM, David Cameramong, is absolutely in fucking love with, the supercilious prick. In the minds of these people failing to comply with recommendations cannot possibly mean that an individual has simply weighed and accepted the risks - it can only mean that they didn't understand, that they're in a state of confusion and must be helped and guided and steered, and if need be cajoled and bullied and forced.

It's denormalisation, folks. Come now, you didn't think that was just something to be used on smokers, did you? The "normal" amount of alcohol consumption has been determined to be as near to nothing as makes no odds, and you will be questioned to see if you comply and nagged if you don't. And in case you're wondering who did the determining, here's a familiar name.

The Royal College of Physicians said the current guidance was 'extremely dangerous' because it implied that drinking every day was safe.

This is presumably the very same Royal College of Physicians that not so very long ago more or less sat around a table making up some very similar sounding guidance. There isn't an actual question in there, not as such, but all the same the answer to that is also "Fuck off."

Happiness is firearms safety

Click for linky

I don't care how glad you are the bastard's dead, get your fucking finger off that trigger, you daft bellend. Fundamental rule of firearm safety: you always always always treat it as if it's loaded even if you've personally taken the magazine out and worked the action. Now and then guns thought to be unloaded turn out to have a round in the chamber after all, and I can tell you from personal experience that hearing the rattle of bolts going back and forth followed by a lot of clicks and one loud bang tightens one's sphincter a little even when it's on a range and you know that all the business ends are pointed in a safe direction. I quote from a post last year in which a very pretty girl is licking a pistol in a very suggestive way with her finger on the trigger and the muzzle right underneath the tip of her nose:

For those who've never who've never shot the basic safety rules are fairly common sense and run along the following lines:

• Unless visibly made safe a gun should always treated as if it is loaded and ready to fire.
• Always point the muzzle in a safe direction.
• Be aware both of the target and what is around it.
• Keep your finger off the trigger and out of the guard until you are ready to fire.
• You'll look better with your nose where it is than you will if you blow it off your face and on to the fucking ceiling.

I think an extra one might have snuck in there.

Click for embiggerfication and guide to what is a safe direction

Oh, Jeez, there's another picture here, and if anything it's even worse as he has a finger over the muzzle.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH! Don't fucking do that. Just don't.

Predictable attack on private ownership

Not a recent sign in Ohio as far as I know,
but don't you just wish it was? 

The slaughter of dozens of lions, tigers, bears and wolves set free from a private Ohio farm has sparked calls for restrictions on the largely unregulated ownership of exotic pets in several US states.
Police in Ohio shot dead almost 50 animals in a frantic hunt after the owner of an exotic farm freed the dangerous animals and then killed himself.
The bloody toll - which included 18 endangered Bengal tigers - has sparked outrage from conservationists, who say it should be a call to action against private ownership of exotic animals.

No argument from me, this is sad. I don't know the ins and outs of this story, why the guy kept all these dangerous animals or why he set them loose before topping himself, but the unnecessary loss of 18 individuals of a species numbering only a couple of thousand or so - plus the other animals - is a bloody shame. That said I don't think I agree with the conversationists and anyone else whose knee jerk response is not just sadness but outrage and the stock statist cries of 'It shouldn't be allowed' and 'There ought to be a law against it'. Yes, there are all sorts of practical problems to keeping an animal in captivity, and the bigger and stronger and more fearsomely armed it is the greater the problem and the expense needed to tackle it. A dog and two cats? Easy. Fifty or so assorted large predators? Different ball game.

Easy? You'll pay for that in your sleep, Exile.

And yet should that alone be a barrier if someone has the resources needed? Sure, if you live near a private zoo and the lion keeps coming over your fence and taking a dump in your veggie patch there's an issue, but isn't that sort of thing what tort law is for? Wouldn't it still be an issue if an animal escapes from any other zoo, private or public owned?

Not only that but banning private ownership means losing one of the advantages of private ownership - property rights. Think about who owns all the endangered species in the world. Generally it's nobody, isn't it? Oh, states and governments and maybe monarchs might claim ownership but even then for all practical purposes there's no real owner, and if the animal is either a resource itself or getting in the way of a resource someone else wants to get at then tough. This is tragedy of the commons stuff, and the way to avoid it is private property rights and the threat of someone coming along and suing the arse off anyone who causes damage or loss, i.e. hurts or kills, that animal.

Take the unfortunate Bengal tiger, for example. Wikipedia suggests that the principle threat to its survival is poaching for skins and body parts, which sounds plausible enough. But what if the tigers were all or mostly privately owned? Wouldn't the owners take steps to protect their property, and if the tigers had value (this is distasteful but presumably the tiger doesn't need its skin, teeth, bellend or whatever after it's carked it from natural causes, so is there still a problem with trading in parts then, and if so is it different from telling the doctors they can harvest a dead relative for organs even though they didn't have a donor card) wouldn't they also encourage the tigers to make lots of little tigers and feed them up to make even more little tigers, and so on? Yes, you could simply hack up all your tigers now for a quick buck, but every half competent owner would be aware of the downside of killing the goose that lays gold eggs or at least understand the principle. Most owners would want to maximise their return and keep up the supply, which in turn means wanting there to be as many tigers as the market can cope with (and can safely be accommodated without eating said private owners, of course).

Now I agree that it's a little weird and not a little nasty to think of encouraging a trade in tiger bollocks or rhino lips or shark earlobes or whatever, and certainly my inner and not quite dead lefty is wailing something about the humiliation of noble beasts for profit, but you know what? Fuck it. If it means not seeing the Bengal tiger go the way of the Tasmanian tiger wouldn't it be worth it?

Really the only concern should be whether or not private ownership would work, and for that I suggest we look at species which are largely in private ownership and see if any are endangered. And as far as I can tell the world isn't exactly short of cats, dogs, horses, sheep, cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys.....

Two old gun clichés

When every second counts the police are only minutes away.

When you criminalise possession of guns only criminals will have possession of guns.

Even as clichés go these two are pretty well worn, yet not only are both still true nonetheless true but from time to time that's demonstrated in a single incident. That's right, I am about to give you an example of that. How'd you guess?

A great-grandfather has told how he used a baseball bat to fight off two thieves who were ransacking his gun cabinet and stole a cache of weapons.
The 70-year-old grandfather-of-10, who has one great-grandchild, told Perthnow he swung his bat at both young men who were smashing into his gun cabinet and attempting to steal his utility at his Alexander Heights home early today.

Now straight away the problem with this should be obvious. Thieves were stealing his guns - his unquestionably legally owned guns which he kept in gun cabinets in accordance with WA and Commonwealth law - and he had to defend his property, and his life if they'd arrived armed or managed to load a gun and turn it on him, with a fucking baseball bat. Surely it's not just shooters who can see the stupidity in this, but just in case it's not I'll note that if they'd stolen a car from his driveway the law would not have insisted that if he chose to give chase he should do so on nothing faster than a bicycle.

Oh, and on that subject they did nick his car too.

He described how he was awoken just before 5am to find his prized Ford XR6 ute on the driveway with its doors wide open and a man smashing his gun cabinet open with a sledgehammer.
[...]
John, who lives at the home with his wife, was awoken by loud bangs from his garage just before 5am.
When he went outside to investigate he found the men trying to break into his gun safe and fought with both of them with a baseball bat before they fled in his ute.
As the robbers drove off John smashed the vehicle's windscreen with the baseball bat.

And predictably enough the ute was found burned out a short time later, minus the six guns the thieves had got away with, natch. As Vincent Vega put it, what's more chickenshit than fucking with a man's automobile? Well, I suppose there is nicking his guns as well, safe in the knowledge that he's highly unlikely to have one out and ready to use to defend himself against you because that's against the law, and the overwhelming majority of legal gun owners are scrupulously law abiding no matter what they might think. And the recently disarmed John is a case in point.

"I've got a crook hip [he took a blow to the side from the sledgehammer - AE] but I'm not as sore as they are,'' he said.
"If they came back I wouldn't have any hesitation . . . (to do it again).
"I confronted them because this is my house, and I've got a right to protect my property.
"Had I had a pistol in my hand, I would have used that as well.
"They've got no right to come in here, I would have used anything to stop them, I've got every right to do that.''
[...]
He shrugged off suggestions he was a hero for standing up to the two thugs.
“It’s just something you do to protect yourself and your property and I feel we’ve got every right to,” he said.
“I’d do it again now, right now, if they were here.
“I think everybody should have a pistol under their bed and use it.
“Had I had my pistol under the bed I would have used it and bugger the consequences . . . this has got to stop.”

But of course John did not have his pistol under the bed, because neither John nor anyone else here is allowed to keep a pistol under the bed. Yes, at least law abiding Australians are allowed to have pistols - providing the local police give permission and that owners comply with various state and Commonwealth laws, of course - and clearly this is a better situation than not being allowed to have one at all. But it's not as good as being at liberty to have one, especially since if self defence is not a valid reason for wanting a pistol, or any other type of gun for that matter, and the law insists that you keep it unloaded and locked away then it's quite useless when dealing with sledgehammer wielding intruders anyway. Jeez, you can have half a dozen guns and for all the good they do you locked away you might as well defend yourself with a baseball bat and hope for the best. Oh, actually that's exactly what happened, isn't it? John didn't have his pistol to hand and resorted to a baseball bat because at least he's allowed to have that lying around, and now doesn't have his pistol or his other guns at all anymore by the sounds of things.

Six guns were stolen including a shotgun and two air rifles.

Terrific, score six for the bad guys, even if John did get a few good whacks in with the bat before they got away. And what about the good guys?

A description of the thieves has not yet been issued by police.

Well, that's not exactly an auspicious start, is it? And of course it's not long before we're reminded to leave it all to the police.

WA Police Sergeant Graham Clifford said the law did give people the right to defend their lives and property, but it was a grey area.
If the defence went too far and became a form of punishment, people would probably be charged, he told AAP.

Which is fair enough, but I don't think home owners dealing with intruders, possibly violent and possibly armed, really give a tinker's stuff about punishing them for breaking in. Driving them off or failing that making them no longer a risk to the occupier and any family there, yes, and if achieving that means one or more intruders lying face down and approaching ambient temperature in a pool of their own vital fluids, well, so be it. Nobody made them break in to someone else's home and put the occupants in fear for their lives, so the consequences of their decision to commit crime are on their own heads. But punishment? Seriously, Sgt Clifford, how many people do you think would honestly give a stuff about punishing intruders when just getting rid of the danger they present is all that matters in that instant?

``Really what we'd prefer people to do is back off and observe and let us know what's going on and we'll chase them down the track,'' Sgt Clifford said.

And I wouldn't want anyone other than trained, professional police investigators doing that, but as for the backing off part, what about when you're at home and have nowhere to back off to? We know we're still supposed to call the cops and let you guys sort that out too, but the problem is the intruders are there already. And in case it's not clear why that's a problem that can be tackled only by people being at liberty to defend themselves we only need to ask one simple question: how long did it take WA police to respond to the report of a break in at the home of a registered firearms owner?

If it was more than five seconds there's your answer.

Occupy Wall Street...

... and then what, you clueless bunch of fucknuts? Going to throw America's captains of industry from the roofs of their own buildings, are you? Should be pretty fucking entertaining given the US has a national debt on the order of fifteen trillion dollars. Now, what's Mandarin for, "Nice one, you fucking idiots"?

Cunts.

Victory? For whom?

Paul Dacre yesterday

Town halls are to be shamed into bringing back weekly bin collections, it was revealed yesterday.
In a victory for householders and the Daily Mail, ministers unveiled a £250million fund to restore them.
Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles said councils will now have ‘no excuse’ to maintain hugely unpopular fortnightly schemes. ‘My view has always been that people expect a weekly collection,’ he said.

Yes, and the reason people expect a weekly collection, and so the reason why tapping taxpayers for another £250m makes this a pyrrhic victory at best, is because they've already fucking paid for it.* Has anyone anywhere heard of a UK council reducing council tax when switching from weekly to fortnightly collections? Anyone?

So what this means is the taxpayers are going to be shaken down again, either in the form of taxes now or in the form of more national debt now to be paid later, all to pay for what they should have been getting in the first place. Some bloody victory, especially as it turns out Eric Pickles can't even promise that the money won't be spunked away on fact finding missions to somewhere sunny with hot weather and hotter waitresses or yet another bunch of outreach and upchuck services for the vertically challenged, gender non-specific, gay, disabled, travellers of extra-terrestrial ethnicity community.**

He cannot force town halls to go back to weekly collections, but made it clear that voters should throw out councils which do not – a provocative suggestion, given that many of those that have gone fortnightly are Conservative controlled.
Mr Pickles told the Daily Mail: ‘I’ve had council leaders sitting at this very table who claim their public like a fortnightly collection and are very supportive. Well, good luck to them. Come the elections, there can be no excuses.’

Actually I don't exactly disagree with this. If people aren't happy they certainly should kick out their councillors (MPs too) come election time, but of course this isn't as straightforward as it sounds when parties have similar, and sometimes identical policies. Who do you vote for when they're all going to do the same thing? Not voting doesn't help since the people that do vote will still ensure that one of the bastards gets in, and like most (all?) democratic countries the UK still doesn't have ballot slips with an option to reject all candidates? As the article makes clear, it's not like this is something one particular party is prone to do when in control of a council, and it didn't take me long working my way down a list of hung councils to find that no overall control doesn't mean any assurance of weekly collections either.

So as far as I can tell The Daily Mail's self congratulatory circle jerk is based on the government tapping taxpayers for another quarter billion to pay for a service they've already paid for through council tax, with no guarantee that this extra money will result in householders actually getting the service. Oh wow, let's break open the champa... er, the really cheap Asti Spumante that someone brought over New Year before last. Seriously, what do British council taxpayers have to do to get the kind of refuse collection service that we get here in Oz, which having come from a fortnightly collection council area in the UK amazed me enough that I blogged it a couple of years ago.

What is it with rubbish collection here? There's a tip/recycling centre about 20 minutes drive away that is either free or inexpensive depending on what and how much we're dropping off. We have a pair of 120 litre bins that are provided to all local rate payers, and for a couple of bucks a week per bin we could double up to 240 litres (or reduce to 80 and get a small rebate). One bin is for rubbish and the other is for assorted - i.e. unsorted - recyclables. Seriously, we don't do any separating beyond what can be recycled and what can't, so all paper, cardboard, tins and plastics with a recycle logo just get rinsed out if necessary and chucked into the same bin, with everything else going into garbage bags before being put in the other bin. Nobody gets their cock in a knot and insists the bins are put out in the morning rather than the night before, nobody talks about fines if it's a bit full and the lid doesn't quite shut all the way, and nobody insists it's in a particular place as long as the robotic arm on the truck can reach, which is a fair way (vid - not our council but similar machines). And both bins are emptied weekly, and we don't have to do anything other than take 'em out the night before the bin men 'garbos' come round.
[...]
I mean, how backward is that? Apart from the robot arms on the vehicles and recycling some stuff that's like where rubbish collection was in Britain 25 years ago.

It's got to the stage now where I think the best chance of that happening is for the councils to have some competition. That means encouraging people to go private and pay for a collections from one of the firms that have begun appearing to provide that service the councils are no longer interested in but still insist on charging for. I've no idea what the average council charge for it these days, and even if I could remember what we used to pay that was several years ago anyway, but a very brief search turned up one UK company willing to do weekly bin collections for about 500 quid a year (plus either a one off £50 for a bin or £6 a month to rent one because councils won't let anyone else empty theirs). That company also does a fortnightly collection for those who might want it, either because they don't produce much rubbish or because they just want rubbish taken those alternate weeks when the council won't do it (shame that means having yet another bin).

Of course, not only would all this be more likely if Eric Pickles stopped putting his hands in the poor bloody taxpayers' wallets and instead told them that they could withhold part or all of the portion of their council tax that pays for kerbside refuse collection if they pay a private contractor to do it instead, but it's an essential move if there's to be any competitive pressure on councils to improve their service. And here's where we run into difficulties, because currently members of the political class or all parties seem congenitally incapable of considering any solution to a problem that doesn't involve them at some level. It's not just the empire building attitude, though that's probably a factor too, but this assumption among politicians and civil servants that people simply won't be able to cope with buying services themselves. In modern infantilised Britain this might even be true to an extent, but it's only a problem if council refuse collection is scrapped altogether. It's not a problem if people can choose freely between continuing to pay the council for whatever it's prepared to provide in the way of bin collection and paying a private company for whatever they actually need in the way of bin collection. The only remaining issue would then be that councils would likely crack the sads at the thought of losing some of their income, and frankly that's just a facet of the empire building thing so too bad.

Still, as I say most current politicians are fiercely statist even if they don't think of themselves as such, so I won't be holding my breath. But if you're walking down a British suburban street on hot summer day there's a fair chance you'll still need to, because I'm sure many bins will still contain nearly two week old rotting food stinking the place up.


* I can't see any mention of whether this is one off or annual. Generally I'd expect politicians doing the 'Have some free money' routine to maximise the sound of their generosity with other people's money by saying if it's an annual thing, but possibly the Cobbleition are getting a bit sensitive to the fact that they promised to tackle the spiralling national debt and they're abjectly failing to do so. Or maybe Britons are starting to realise that governments have no money of their own and asking who's really picking up the bills for their largesse. I'm not wildly optimistic about that but I'd very much hope so.
** This is probably about the last group apart from vanilla WASPs who don't have outreach services yet.

Light blogging this week...

... means that the only comment I really have time to make on the above headline is "Are you fucking serious or have you been doing lines of mercury?" Not that Cameron is not a complete twat and his government almost as big a bunch of disappointing and feckless wankers as, well, as the Labour governments of the previous 13 years, but for one thing the government isn't actually cutting police numbers. Seems to me that if forces want to spend their budgets on expensive or irrelevant bullshit rather than police officers then their numbers, or lack thereof, is a problem of their own making. Just an idea this, but they could start with multiplying the number of officers they'd like by the salaries they'd need to pay and then subtracting that number from the budget before spunking money away on other stuff. It's a thought, that's all.

And for another thing the Cobbleition hasn't made any cuts. This is getting really fucking tedious to have  to keep saying this, but cuts are badly needed and the Cobbleition has failed to cut a penny off of overall public spending, and in fact they've managed to spend even more. Yes, they have been more profligate than even the crazed fuckwits who preceded them, and only those crazed fuckwits and their equally crazed and fuckwitted followers could possibly imagine that a government that spends more than the last one has cut a fucking thing. The only point at which the concept of spending less enters into it is that they are spending less than the profligate cocksocket Brown would have spent if he'd managed to win the election. That's it, and it does not qualify as a cut any more than saying I'll take out a loan to buy a Ferrari next year and then changing my mind is saving money.<

I'd suggest to Yvette Cooper that she goes home and asks around her family to see if someone can explain it to her, but since her family has got Ed Balls in it that's probably a waste of time.

'Kinell!

Irony

Click for linky

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

A top European court banned the Soviet Union's famous hammer and sickle from being used as a commercial trademark as it is "a symbol of despotism" in some EU countries.

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

"The symbols in question would be seen as contrary to public policy and to accepted principles of morality by a substantial section of the relevant public living in the part of the European Union which has been subject to the Soviet regime."

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha haha ha. Haha. Heh.

If they'd said refused to grant it trademark status because it's too well known a symbol, or because it's been public domain for so long that it's just not practical, or even because trademarks and IP in general are something which are being abused and were never supposed to be a route to easy money for IP holders and their legal departments, if they'd said any of that I could have respected it. But instead an institution that dictates to EU member states and hands down decisions felt by some to be morally a bit shaky side has knocked back this request because of the Soviet Union's dictatorial nature and whether using its symbols for business is moral. Motes and beams, boys, motes and beams.

As the saying goes, you couldn't make it up.

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.