Quote of the Day.

Ursine subarboreal toilet activity

The Tele's James Delingpole on why warble gloaming is still happening, really it is, and how another winter submerged in snow is evidence of it. Tongue firmly in cheek, of course.

...Signs That Show Man Made Global Warming Is Definitely Still Happening And That Cancun Won’t Be An Almighty Flop.
1. Warm weather
2. Cold weather
3. In-between weather.
4. Dark skies at night
5. Light skies in the morning
6. An unpleasant moist/damp/wet sensation when it rains
7. Ice appearing when the temperature drops below zero
8. Clouds rolling across sky in all sorts of funny shapes, some days like cotton wool, other days in streaks, and on some days not there at all.
9. Ursine subarboreal toilet activity
10. Strong new evidence of ultramontane sympathies at the Vatican

I suggest you go and read the rest of it.

The violence of democracy.

Via Dick Puddlecote, an excellent short animation on the use of violence by democratic states.



You and George also helped pay for those bloody Segways that ordinary Britons aren't allowed to use in public.

Memory hole at The Telegraph?

A short while ago I read this over at Bill Sticker's.

Logged on to my Disqus account last night to comment on one of the Tellytubbygraphs blog threads. Specifically to do with the breaking news that Japan has thrown the Kyoto accords under the bus at Cancun. No sooner had I typed my comment, than the 'your comment is being moderated' sign popped up. I immediately typed in another short and pithy remark about being immediately moderated, which was published with no moderation. Then I edited it to mention Japan's blunt refusal to extend the Kyoto accords. No moderation again. No mention of Japan's actions in the pages of the Tellytubbygraph, today either.

Interesting.....

I thought I'd go have a look-see, partly to leave my own comments and partly to see if they'd be moderated too. Strangely I couldn't find the article at all by browsing the usual areas of their site, and since it's very current I found this a bit surprising.* So I went to the search tool and put in "Kyoto" - no joy. Then I tried "Japan" with each of "emissions", "Cancun" and "target" - still nothing. It looks like the piece Bill Sticker saw there... is now not there. Now maybe it needed re-editing and will reappear, though the moderation of comments is sufficiently unusual that you can't help but wonder if it's been pulled for good. Time will tell, but if it's editing how long do they need? Bill Sticker was trying to leave a comment last night, maybe 12 hours or so ago for him, so you'd have thought it'd be back by now. I suspect it's gone for good.


* What I did find was Chuckles FcKnuckles weighing in to defend the Climategate mob. Predictable stuff and I may fisk it later, though I think I'll save a copy to the desktop just in case.

Brrrr.

And as WUWT points out, it looks exactly the same as it did last winter - actually only 48 weeks ago. All of which makes this March 2000 prediction in The Independent that's been waved around on various blogs all the more - what's the phrase I'm looking for? Oh, yeah - fucking wrong.

Britain's winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives.

Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain's culture, as warmer winters - which scientists are attributing to global climate change - produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries.

The first two months of 2000 were virtually free of significant snowfall in much of lowland Britain, and December brought only moderate snowfall in the South-east. It is the continuation of a trend that has been increasingly visible in the past 15 years: in the south of England, for instance, from 1970 to 1995 snow and sleet fell for an average of 3.7 days, while from 1988 to 1995 the average was 0.7 days. London's last substantial snowfall was in February 1991.

Global warming, the heating of the atmosphere by increased amounts of industrial gases, is now accepted as a reality by the international community. Average temperatures in Britain were nearly 0.6°C higher in the Nineties than in 1960-90, and it is estimated that they will increase by 0.2C every decade over the coming century. Eight of the 10 hottest years on record occurred in the Nineties.

However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event".

"Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said.

And now they're getting a whole country-load of snow twice in the same year in the latest in a series of consecutive cold winters. Rare and exciting, Dr Viner? Relatives back in the UK are telling me it's becoming a real pain in the arse, not to mention the fact that people are actually fucking freezing to death in these rare and exciting events.

So although it's obviously retrospective I think this is time to update my list of Warble Gloaming Dates For Your Diary, which is something I haven't done for quite a while. Granted it's not a particularly solid prediction but I think there's enough to work with: children wouldn't know snow "within a few years" of March 2000. The word "few" is generally considered to mean a pretty small number but if 2-3 was meant then "a couple of years" or something similar would probably have been said instead, as would something like "ten or twelve" if something along those lines was meant. So I'm going for the middle and assume "a few years" means 4-6. The updated list now reads:

• Probably should have happened by now - New York's West Side Highway impassable due to being underwater - Dr. James Hansen (1988/89 interview)
• Probably should have happened around 2005 ± 1 yr - British children will not know snow in their own country - Dr David Viner (Independent, Mar 2000)
• "Imminently" - loss of world's coral reefs - David Attenborough ('world’s tropical reefs face ‘imminent destruction’ unless CO2 levels are slashed')
• Late 2013 - ice free Arctic - Al Gore (North Pole will be ice free in five years')
• 2014 - the whole world and everything fucked up beyond repair - WWF.
• Dec 2016 - the whole world and everything all fucked up beyond repair - the Prince of Wails and the 100 months mob
• Dec 2016 - loss of 'the levers of control' for the climate - the Prince of Fails... again.
• Late 2019 - ice free Arctic - Pen Hadow (ten years to Arctic ice loss)
• Late 2019 - the whole world and everything fucked up beyond repair - UK Met Office.
• Late 2029 - loss of Great Barrier Reef - marine scientist Charlie Veron ('global warming will destroy the World Heritage site within just 20 years')

So in addition to the imminent destruction of the world's coral reefs per David Attenborough in July 09, which is presumably due any second (checks... nope, they're still there) and the ice free North Pole per the Goracle due in almost exactly three years we have two predictions for which the due date has already come and gone. Mark your calendars for the others, especially the real catastrophic stuff from the WWF and Prince of Fails Chuckles FcKnuckles and especially as Japan is pissing on the Cancun party by telling everyone they don't want to extend Kyoto. At the same time as one of Britain's delegates to the conference is delayed by snow.

If people weren't dying I might actually laugh.

Finally, a fucking admission - UPDATED.

David Chaytor has pleaded guilty to three counts of fraud. The poor soul's conscience must have simply been eating him up, though not fast enough to stop him from stalling and trying to use the Bill of Rights to claim that submitting fraudulent expense claims was covered by parliamentary privilege. I'm guessing Chaytor either thought or was advised that his case was piss weak and is now angling for a non-custodial sentence. I do hope the judge keeps in mind that the fucker fought tooth and nail to avoid a trial and has had to be dragged to court kicking and screaming and with several stops for the judicial system to pry his fingers off various things he was trying to hang on to. Hardly the actions of a penitent man overcome with remorse, I feel, so he really ought to do some time. Not very much, perhaps, and probably as part of a longer sentence which is mostly suspended. He's not likely to be a danger to the public or a repeat offender after all, but he also defrauded the public and abused his position to do so. I don't particularly want him to end up as B Wing's shared bitch and I don't mind if he spends a lot of time with an electronic tag, as long as he does at least a little time. If he doesn't what message will the current mob take from it? Some will think he's been bloody lucky but others will think, "Great. Lie, cheat, steal, avoid responsibility and fight any attempt of the proles to exact some measure of justice, and if the worst comes to the worst you can still avoid a Shawshank Redemption moment in a Wandsworth shower by pleading guilty once a trial is inevitable."

That's a message that cannot be allowed. Sorry, Dave. Some credit for finally coming clean, albeit extremely belatedly, but just as you've set a bad example for others to follow it's now necessary for you to set a better one.


PS - And Woolas has lost his challenge too. Good.


UPDATE - The Tele are saying he faces a maximum of seven years in prison but will probably get a lot less due to the plea. That actually sounds fair.

The sky is falling.

It amazes me how anyone takes this shit seriously anymore.

Click to article

The winters here certainly feel like they've got colder since I arrived and the last one was wet enough to have virtually ended a decade long drought on its own. The winters in the northern hemisphere have definitely been getting colder while barbecue summers in Britain have been cold and wet. The last winter in particular seemed savagely cold what with the almost the entire British Isles, except for of a couple of small areas near Westminster and Cambridge that had benefited from a certain amount of local warming from hot air, was covered in a blanket of globally warmed snow and ice that was so thick in places that supplies of salt and grit ran low or even ran out. This winter has barely started and already the warble gloaming is falling in deep drifts and people in Europe have quite literally frozen to death.

But it's the warmest decade ever, obviously. Surely we can all see that? Something must be done, future generations, carbon dioxide, trees, chiiiiildren, yaddayaddayadda. Well, here's my forecast: that something will involve more money to people already making a living, if not epic pots of cash, off the back of this induced epidemic of weather-phobia. Subsidies are already starting to look a little shaky in places and I'm sure that those who've still got incomes or comfy tenures that rely on a continued belief in warble gloaming would very much like things to continue as per the recent norm. So make sure you turn the gas down as you sit there shivering in the dark.

Dodged that bullet.

Aw, shame.

Australia received a single solitary vote and was the first nation eliminated in the fight for the right to host the 2022 World Cup. It ended up being a fourth-round battle between Qatar and the United States with the Middle Eastern nation winning 14-8.

Goodoh. That means the Qataris pay for it and not us. In Victoria we spunk away millions every fucking year on hosting the Grand Prix alone, and despite being a motor racing fan I bloody object to that. The soccer World Cup? You can bloody keep it.

And it's also bad news for British fans, though good news for their wallets.

There's a very strong suggestion that England was eliminated in the first round of voting for the 2018 tournament. Serious questions will be asked. Did yesterday's crowd violence in the Birmingham-Aston Villa EPL match have any late impact on voting? What about the BBC program?

Who'd have thought it. A bunch of fighty fans and the BBC may have combined to save the country a lot of money. I mean, what the fuck were they thinking when they bid for the bloody thing anyway? Were they expecting to fund it with the huge profits they're going to make from the Olympics?

Profit? In your dreams, buddy.

Look, I like watching sport. No, in fact I love it and there aren't many things I won't watch (soccer is one of them as it happens). But let's get the principle of the money sorted out once and for all - it is not the job of a government, whether state or federal/national, to act as a fucking sports promoter, okay? It's simply not a government function. By all means talk it up and support it verbally but do not, repeat do fucking not, go putting your sticky fucking mitts into taxpayers pockets to pay for it.

And there's a reason for that. Aside from not unnecessarily separating taxpayers from yet more of their hard earned, which incidentally is reason enough on it's own, what do you think happens when sport thinks it has a practically endless pool of money to dive into courtesy of its good friends in government? It fucking gets more expensive, of course. Again, take the Melbourne Grand Prix or the London Olympics as an example. Do they actually have to cost as much to stage as the governments have to fork over, and if it they do is it worth it? If the answer to both is yes then surely it should be no great challenge to persuade all the private enterprises who benefit from it to chip in instead of robbing everyone from fucking Mildura to Mallacoota to pay for a Melbourne event and Land's End to John O' Groats to fund a London event. And when something is funded with private money value is sought after and normally got, because otherwise the money will stop flowing. However, the fact that Britain has been struggling to get private money in to cover even the minority of Olympic costs that weren't planned to be met willing or otherwise by the taxpayer does rather suggest the answer is in fact no.

As I said, I like watching sport. I'll watch the London Olympics and the Melbourne Grand Prix - I've even paid to go a couple of times - but I'm in it for the sport, not for all the bullshit presentation and pomp that goes with it and that drives the costs up to the point that often only governments, with their ability to rob whole populations en masse, can fucking afford to pay for it. What's needed is a reality check for sporting bodies such as the IOC, FIFA, IRB, FIA and anyone else from the alphabetti spaghetti gang. What's needed is for the bids from governments to host these increasingly lavish and costly events to dwindle away to the point that the sporting bodies have to tone down their expectations for huge opening ceremonies with twenty thousand performers doing something culturally significant yet also utterly mystifying followed by enough fireworks to make the Americans think another war has started, and approach private investors who'll actually expect a more tangible ROI than, "It'll be a great opportunity to showcase the city/state/country".

Normally I'd finish off this kind of rant with some comment to the effect that I'm pretty pessimistic about the chances of this actually happening, but also in the sports news this morning is something that holds out a slim ray of hope that this might be beginning. The Victorian taxpayers' regular contributions to Tiger Woods' ex-wife's lawyer's bank balance has also been an occasional topic of froth spitting rage on these pages, and happily that's going to stop.

THE Tiger Woods gravy train in Melbourne appears to have been derailed by the new state government.

Woods's appearance in the Australian Masters, the tournament he has single-handedly reinvigorated in the past two years, is in doubt because Premier-elect Ted Baillieu said the government would not fund a visit by the world's most famous golfer.

The Brumby government - through its Victorian Major Events Corporation - contributed about $1.5 million in each of the past two years towards a $3 million appearance fee for Woods, which was slightly below the standard rate.

But Baillieu has previously said that a Coalition government would not countenance the payment of a fee, and he repeated it yesterday.

And fucking right too. I don't care one way or the other about the dick swinging stick swinger or whether he comes to Melbourne to play a few holes, or even some golf. But the cost of persuading him to stop having sex long enough to get on a plane and compete here should be borne by those who actually want him, and if he's priced himself out of the market that's up to him. Needless to say I'm quite pleased about this. I was glad to see the back of the Labor state government but naturally I didn't expect to be any fan of the replacement. I'm not eating my words here but I am having a small nibble on the corner of one letter. Credit where it's due, Ted Baillieu is spot on here, and I hope it sets a trend of pollies and governments refusing to further enrich already wealthy sportspeople and bodies.

As a result I'm creating a new tag: "Politicians getting things right for a change". It probably isn't going to see an awful lot of use, but let's hope I'm wrong about that too.

Police dummy spit in 3... 2...

Actually the dummy spitting over the plan for elected local police commissioners has been going on for a while, and as Douglas Carswell says he's been getting grief about it for longer than most since he's been advocating the idea in the face of determined opposition from The Plod for years. Happily for Carswell and unhappily for the ACPO PLC Ltd (FOIA-GFY)* it's gone from being an idea to a proposal, to a plan with a date on it.

Directly-elected Police & Crime Commissioners (PCCs) are the boldest reform of policing since the 1960s. In May 2012 there will be 41 new political beasts in England and Wales with large, direct mandates. They look set to transform policing and public debate about crime.

...

The new Commissioners will replace weak and invisible police authorities who, despite costing £65m a year and spending £25m in the last 3 years alone on expenses and allowances, have failed to hold chief constables to account. As a result, police chiefs have become too powerful, too detached and too risk-averse – with failure to tackle crime often just excused.

Small wonder the Bosses in Blue and some of their fellow travellers are less than thrilled with the idea.

An ACPO spokesperson

Rob Garnham, chairman of the Association of Police Authorities and a Conservative councillor, said it was the "wrong policy at the wrong time".
...
The first of the proposed commissioners are expected to be in place by May 2012, with the power to hire and fire chief constables.
...
Ministers say the planned commissioners, similar to the US system, will improve the local accountability of police forces and their chief constables.
But many chief constables are concerned elected officials will interfere in day-to-day policing, making it difficult for them to balance local duties with their national responsibilities.
Mr Garnham said: "At a time of budget cuts and public concern, this Bill is the wrong response to people's priorities. The public understand the need to tackle the deficit. They also want to be kept safe.
"But where's the evidence that the public want more elections, or more politicians? Where's the evidence that bringing in police commissioners will cut crime?"

Where's the evidence that it won't cut crime? It might not work but there are logical reasons to think that it should. An individual PCC might not be much good but where one proves ineffective it should be expected that he'll be replaced for a better choice come election time. In theory this democratic process should create an almost Darwinian environment where hopeless PCCs cannot hold their job long term while those that deliver will win re-election and carry on doing what they'd been doing. As for the concern about elected officials interfering with the day to da...

... shadow home secretary Ed Balls said: "This goes against a 150-year tradition of keeping politics out of policing."

Oh, fuck me. Trust fucking Ed Bollocks to stick his beak in. Look, Blinky, you're a fine one to talk about keeping politics out of policing. Whose government gave the police S44 and encouraged the harassing of innocent photographers? Oh yeah, it was your mob, wasn't it?

"It raises the very real prospect of a politician telling a chief constable how to do their job."

Which somehow doesn't apply to Jack Straw, David Blunkett, Charles Clarke, John Reid, Jacqboot Smith and Alan Johnson in their respective terms as Labour Home Secretaries? Oh, of course. They weren't telling a chief constable what to do, they were telling all of them. Christ, Blinky, how can policing not be politicised when the government of the day, a political party, is in the driving seat when it comes to making and scrapping laws and saying which ones it wants to focus on. If you didn't work that out while you were in government you're a poor choice for Shadow Home Sec. Not only that but look how the Police Authorities the Chief Constables answer to now are appointed.

Most police authorities have 17 members:

• Nine local councillors appointed by the local council
• Eight independent members selected following local advertisements, at least one of whom must be a magistrate

And

It is up to councils to decide which councillors to appoint to the police authority, but they must do so within certain rules. The most important of these is political balance, which means that the political balance of the councillors appointed to the police authority must reflect the political balance of the councils in the area of the police authority.

...

Elected mayors for upper tier councils can automatically be appointed members of police authorities if they and their councils wish, and the political balance calculation for other councillor members will then need to take the political party of the mayor into account.

See, Ed? Already politicised both on a national and local level. Now why don't you be a good cunt and fuck off?

Now I admit I do have a few doubts along these lines because as with all democratic processes there exists the slim but real chance of some demagogic fucknuts being elected on a platform of lunatic authoritarianism, though on the plus side that style of policing might feel comfortably familiar in some parts of the UK. However, they've given this some thought and made an effort to minimise this possibility.

Despite the scaremongering of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), the risk of extremists winning election is wildly overstated. Political parties will run candidates and successful PCCs will have mandates from up to several million electors each. The preferential voting system will make the election of extremists highly implausible, as candidates will need support from all sections of very large geographic areas.

Not perfect but in a democracy what is? Frankly my only real gripe is that this might be putting the cart before the horse a bit. The Cobbleition have inherited a set of law books with a vast number of victimless crimes on, more than a few of which are new ones invented by Ed Bollocks' team. If the public feel that there's a bit too much police attention on the wrong things then removing bullshit victimless crimes should free up police resources to deal with ones with a clear and genuine victim who has suffered measurable and tangible harm. The PCCs might be a way to achieve this as well, but there are likely to be some elected on a platform of zero tolerance of pot smokers and checking behind every tree to see if it's hiding a nonce. My personal feeling is that that wouldn't be a vast improvement over Home Orifice policies that encourage whole police forces to concentrate on low hanging fruit and headline crimes while doing little more, sometimes nothing more, than giving out a crime number for a vast range of other offences. On the other hand there are some intriguing possibilities from the libertarian point of view.

Imagine that in one area some foam mouthed authoritarian nutter was elected and begun a regime of zero tolerance for just about everything the government said wasn't quite right with the world, because that's more or less what the majority there want. In a neighbouring area the voters elected someone who was obsessed with the most crude clear up rate, again because the locals were after a busy police force and hoped that effectiveness would follow automatically. In a third area the electorate voted in someone who promised to go easy on the trivial offences but wouldn't ignore someone with a bit of puff or a group of hookers who set up a new knocking shop. And in a fourth are they elected a PCC determined to concentrate on crimes against the person and property to the point of quietly turning a blind eye to activities that weren't legal but don't actually harm anyone else. What might happen then? Would the über-statists of all four areas be attracted to the first one and begin to move in as more liberty loving types there move out and head for the last one? Would the ones who don't want to be hassled by police for trivial motoring offences but support laws that say how individuals use their own bodies be similarly attracted to the third area, and so on? It could be a two way street where not only would certain towns or areas demand a certain kind of Commissioner but that certain kinds of Commissioners would make their areas more attractive to certain types of individuals.

And if that happened might things go even further? Might the laws be adjusted and tweaked, perhaps some repealed here and new ones introduced there according to what kind of legal environment the locals, whether established or recently arrived from other areas, are asking and voting for? Would that expand to other areas of life such as local taxes and services too? It's probably a bloody slim chance, I know, but just maybe it could lead to the kind of society in which a few cities or counties that were basically libertarian could appear. If the whole remainder of the country was solidly statist and populated entirely by people happy to be told what to do and taxed heavily for the privilege that'd be just fine - the only real issue a libertarian should have with a statist is the statist's insistence that everyone else should be one too. If there was just one place libertarians could go and live free lives what everyone else does would be their choice, and there's just the slightest chance it could all begin with a little more local choice over law enforcement.

Of course what we'll probably see is a lot of something like this.

Yee-haw.



* Freedom Of Infomation Act? Go Fuck Yourselves.

For Captain Ranty.

Glad you're sticking around, Cap'n. Have a good day.

They won't stop and they won't learn.

Depressing to be proved right.

Click for article

Far from crashing to a halt it seems like the gravy train just ran over a particularly noisy set of points. I mean, Christ, just look at it.

A list of 1,574 claims, rejected by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) in the space of five months, shows that politicians have attempted to claim back money for their mortgage repayments, first-class travel and excessive hospitality.
The document, obtained by The Times newspaper, which lists a total of rejected claims worth £116,359, also reveals how parliamentarians submitted duplicate claims and did not provide suitable documentary evidence to back up their claims.
One MP was refused £338 for a shredder, while another tried to claim £1,057 for advertising. A third asked for £1,085 for ''contingencies''.

No receipts and duplicate claims? They've learnt nothing, have they? Not a fucking thing. And £338 for a shredder? The one we use was about 100 bucks so I'd have thought £338 would buy one of those heavy duty monsters with a massive bin. Fuck me, how much incriminating evidence was he trying to destroy? As for "contingencies" if the MP can't be specific then they should absolutely be knocked back. That at least is the plus side to this story.

All claims, which were submitted between May and September this year, were refused by Ipsa - the body set up to administer MPs expense claims.

Bloody right too, but...

The unsuccessful claims amounted to 7% of the total submitted by MPs during the period.

I realise this is an over simplification but 7% of the House is 45 MPs, so we're probably not talking one or two here. And the news gets worse.

The identity of the MPs who wrongly claimed the items will remain secret following an agreement made in the summer with the independent watchdog and receipts will also not be published with overall claims.

So we've no idea if this is old troughers that managed to avoid the worst of the fallout last time, hang on to their seats, and take up more or less where they left off, or if some of the new intake have joined in. Nor do we get to see the receipts - again.

Not. Fucking. Acceptable.

No more Nanny State? In our dreams.

Not for the first time I'm experiencing the depressing feeling that NuLabour and its nasty, intrusive, bossy little ways never really left, and it's the fault of whoever was pulling the talk-cord on the Health Secretary Sockpuppet, Andrew Lansley, when he came out with this weapons grade cuntwaftery.

Click to article

For fuck's sake, this is Brownian level cognitive dissonance here. No more Nanny Statism but instead there will be nudges in the right direction, said direction decided by none other than the fucking Nanny State. And what kind of nudging are we going to see from BlueLabour's Health Sockpuppet? Well, let's have a look-see.

Government will be less 'intrusive' in people's lives and not tell them what to do, minsters said as they published the new public health white paper, Healthy Lives, Healthy People.
Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, said Jamie Oliver's approach in schools had been a good example of encouraging healthier living but then had been taken too far with dictates laid down about what could and could not be in lunch boxes.

Okay so far apart from the bit about schools encouraging healthier living. Schools are there to fucking educate, and some people might feel they'd do so more effectively if they restricted their focus on health matters to not letting the kids eat anything from the chemistry lab's jars and sticking plasters on grazed knees.* Other than that not bad, but I have a feeling that it can't last. Oh, and sure enough (my bold)...

He said: "I think what Jamie Oliver did was brilliant but telling people what should be in lunch boxes all the time was a mistake. We want people to have changed their behaviour not just be told what their diet should be."

In other words what Jamie Oliver did wrong wasn't that he came across as a hectoring, nosey, self-important, nannying know-all but that he was ultimately unsuccessful in making the proles do what they're told.

Tactics will be switched from nannying and legislation to nudges and persuasion. This will include vouchers for healthy living, walk-to-school incentives.

Which is fucking nannying and will fucking require legislation, making the qualitative difference between Labour and Cobbleition as near to zero as makes no fucking difference.

“People’s health and wellbeing will be at the heart of everything local councils do..."

Oh, Christ. As if the government and councils weren't already overly concerned with the minutiae of citizens' lives, now we can look forward to even more. Some day a council will eventually employ gauleiter type solely to make sure everybody has had a shit today, probably known as a Constipation Avoidance Officer or Regularity Regulator.

Or a Bottom Inspector.

In addition there will be five Public Health Responsibility Deal networks, involving charities and industry on food, alcohol, physical activity, health at work and behaviour change, to formulate ideas.

Translation: five more fucking quangos associated with a bunch of fake charities and corporatist fuckbaskets lobbying government to nag the poor cunts paying for all of this to stop living how they want to and start living how they're told to. Fuck me dead, they're already well under way with elf'n'safety at work as well as the food and drink - and clearly Andrew fucking Lansley has no intention of putting a stop to it - and now they're going to start on physical activity and behaviour change. The first smacks of good old Kraft durch Freude, which is nasty enough, but the Orwellian sounding "behaviour change"? Am I the only one who finds that term just a bit fucking disturbing?

And this is all supposed to be a reduction, nay, an end to Nanny Statism? Do me a fucking lemon, will you. Look at what else we have coming out of the Health Sockpuppet's department lately:

• Minimum prices on alcohol.
• Increased tax on stronger beers.
• Confectionary companies should fund anti-obesity campaigns.
• Cigarettes and tobacco in plain packaging.
• Smart cards for kids and readers on lampposts to prove they're walking to school. (H/T Raedwald for that one).

Jesus, if this is a retreat from nannying I'd hate to see what he'd consider an increase. Interfering in the decisions of individuals, interfering in how private companies run their business and encouraging council busybodies and prodnoses to take yet more interest in both, all on the taxpayer, natch. Well fuck you, Lansley, fuck you right in the lungs - this is nothing but bloody nannying, and if you can't see that you're a bigger bellend than is normal even for Westminster. Did I say cognitive dissonance earlier? I was wrong about that. Cognitive dissonance implies that someone is aware of the contradiction in what they say and in the positions they hold, and far from Lansley recognising that I suspect he honestly believes all of what he's said. There's a much better term for what Lansley is doing here.

Winston sank his arms to his sides and slowly refilled his lungs with air. His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them...

Doublethink and other IngSoc-like habits were often characteristic of NuLabour ("Peace is War" and "Knowledge is Ignorance" both seem pretty apt examples of doublethink for the Blair and Brown years), and to find the new Health Sockpuppet at it as well just shows once again how similar the main parties have become. The policies themselves are not altogether a surprise because the Tories were always a bunch of paternalistic bastards who assumed they knew what was best for everyone, though no less unwelcome for all that, but Lansley's claim that this is somehow an end to the Nanny State is really pissing into the wound.

Bastards!


* Not that they're allowed to stick plasters on knees or teach chemistry anymore in case pupils might turn out to be allergic to plasters or have a fit from trying to remember Avogadro's number.

Talking through the Met Orifice.

Via WUWT I see the Met Orifice have been keeping down to their usual standard. WUWT has screencaps and links to Met Orifice forecast article in The Daily Express of 28th October and The Daily Mail dated exactly one month later. In the first we see that:

The Met Office, using data generated by a £33million supercomputer, claims Britain can stop worrying about a big freeze this year because we could be in for a milder winter than in past years.

Followed by some knife-twisting stuff about barbecue summers and mild winters, with some scepticism thrown in by independent forecasters who feel that this winter's likely to be another cold one.

The second article is quite a contrast. The Mail have resisted the temptation to go for "Snowpocalypse!" in their headline and settled for

'Stay indoors!'

Which sounds like the beginning of one of those spoof Mail front pages, but is actually a bit of nannying from police who are too afraid to say "Drive carefully" instead.

'Stay indoors!' Police warn Britons to stay off the roads as temperatures fall to MINUS 10C and 15 inches of snow falls.

And goes on to explain that Britain is getting the heaviest early snowfall for 17 years. The Met Orifice didn't get a mention, funnily enough.