Childcatcher II

Surfing through the Times Online I came across this. Words fail me, they really do.

Ok, they've stopped failing me now. What kind of a society is it where a bunch of weight fascists from the Local Government Association seriously propose taking kids from their parents because they're a bit on the chubby side? Christ alive, it might not be particularly good parenting but it's not child abuse either. Yes, there are health issues but who the fuck is the LGA to play surrogate parent? If they're so fucking concerned how about putting back some of the school playing fields that these dumb fucks have sold off over the years?

But it's not really about the health issue is it? It's about these busybodies thinking they have the right to run people's lives for them because they know best. This sort of thing has been tried before with disastrous results for those affected. I have only three words to say to the LGA:

Go fuck yourselves.

Water terrorists

Oh, get a fucking sense of perspective will you. Wrong, maybe. Selfish, probably. But it's not like blowing people up. Bali was terrorism, 7/7 was terrorism, September 11th was terrorism, Madrid, the Ulster campaign... see where we're going here? If a farmer illegally drawing extra water from the Murray is a terrorist what does that make the shops and consumers who buy the produce? Are we sponsors of terrorism? Co-conspirators? Accessories after the fact? Bollocks! Whatever it is (and I'm certainly not defending it) it's not bloody terrorism and if I'd lost someone in a real terrorist attack I'd be pretty pissed off that Mike Rann equates illegal irrigation with mass murder.

Bloke

Bloke - Chris Franklin

Excuse me, is this seat taken?

Yep. Tough shit Tamsin.

Childcatcher

From the Daily Telegraph -Profiles of 40,000 innocent children on DNA database.

Sorry? Was that innocent you said?

Meg Hillier, junior Home Office minister, said the database contained profiles of 39,095 children aged 10 to 17 who 'had not been convicted, cautioned, received a final warning/reprimand and had no charge pending against them'.

Yep, sounds like innocent to me. Grudgingly I have to give some credit to the Tories for bringing the issue up and for the LibDems for making waves as well. Let's not mince words here, it's a fucking disgrace that the government is happy to collect DNA records of innocent children - children - in this way. Yes, going by the law of averages some of them undoubtably will be complete shits, but remember they have not been... what was it again? Oh yeah:

'...not been convicted, cautioned, received a final warning/reprimand and had no charge pending against them.'

Thanks Meg Hillier, junior Home Office minister. Just who the fuck are you incidentally? Actually never mind, don't bother. It's not as if your chances of being in Parliament much less government for more than another couple of years are that flash, so you might as well keep it to yourself. For now I'll assume that you're one of the drones that senior ministers wheel out to regurgitate inconvenient answers to opposition MPs when they don't want the flak, ok? The fact that the DNA profiles of 40,000 children who haven't even been cautioned for any offense let alone been convicted in court have been kept by the state and it's not considered worthy of a cabinet member - picking someone at random, Jacqui Smith for example, since she's the bloody Home Secretary - responding is another fucking insult in itself, but I don't blame Meg for that.

Oh, but it's ok really:

A Home Office spokesman said...

Hang on, what happened to Meg? First 40,000 innocent people, children at that, on the DNA database isn't important enough for Jacqui Smith to comment on, and now Home Office junior minisdrone Meg Hillier has vanished to be replaced by an anonymous Home Office spokesman. Christ! Anyway...

A Home Office spokesman said: 'Inclusion on the DNA Database does not signify a criminal record and there is no personal cost or material disadvantage to the individual simply by being on it.'

Then there's no reason not to take them off either, you twat.

'The Government has no plans to introduce a universal database.'

Again, there's no reason to keep the records if that's true.

'The National DNA Database is a key intelligence tool which has revolutionised the way the police can protect the public through identifying offenders and securing more convictions. It provides critical investigative leads for police investigations, providing on average around 45,000 matches per year.'

Oh please do us a fucking favour. You're justifying this on the basis of annual convictions that are little more than the number of innocent people's details you're holding on the fucking thing? Oh, hang on a mo...

Anybody arrested for a serious offence can have their genetic data stored for life on the national DNA database - even if they are later cleared. The DNA profiles of 4.2 million people are on the database – an estimated one million of them are innocent.

So including adults that's the DNA profiles of a million or so innocent people, nearly a quarter of the database. And you reckon you're getting about 45,000 matches a year. I notice you don't say 45,000 extra convictions per year or 45,000 extra crimes solved per year. Just "matches". Is that 45,000 individual matches? One match to 45,000 crimes? What? We don't know because you're not telling us. All we do know is what you've condescendingly acknowledged: that your bastard bloody database has about a million innocent people on it, that nearly 40,000 are children, that the numbers are increasing, and that you expect us to think that you're not gradually building a universal database.

You utter utter bastards.


UPDATE: It's ironic that the number of DNA database matches claimed is the same as the number of people affected by the latest data security balls up. Honestly, if they're going to be authoritarian bastards they could at least try to be efficient authoritarian bastards.

All your genitalia are belong to us... for now

I just discovered something rather odd about my new home. Okay, something else odd. Abortion is a crime in the State of Victoria. So what, you may say. There are plenty of other places in the world where it's illegal, and whatever your views on the issue (and for the record mine are that it's distasteful but as I'm lacking a uterus I'm not going to tell women what to do with theirs) it's not an unusual situation. I think the same applies in the Republic of Ireland, and no doubt girls who inadvertently get themselves up the duff nip over to the UK for a quickie termination. Australia's physical isolation makes that a bit tricky but a quick bit of googling shows that the law is a little less strict in New South Wales and, since 2002, abortion on demand has been legal in the Australian Capital Territory (Canberra and surrounding areas for those unfamiliar with Australian administrative divisions - think Washington DC with even weirder animals).

But here's the strange thing - Victoria is one of several States to have very liberal prostitution laws. Brothels and escort agencies have been legitimate businesses here since 1994 (though street prostitution is still illegal) and no-one gets a record for using or working in one, the girls get regular medicals and blood tests and so on. So... how come a woman has less freedom when it comes to her uterus than she has in respect to the rest of her reproductive system? It's also odd that the situation is more or less the reverse of the UK. When will governments develop some consistency?

Well here it might not be that long. The Age reports that a bill is going to be put before the State Parliament very shortly that could see abortion legal before Christmas. Ladies of Victoria, I still say there are much easier and healthier choices available for birth control: pills, jabs, condoms, caps and not least keeping your legs together. But right now there are parts of your bodies that really belong to Parliament, and if that offends you more than abortion then why not pop round to Spring Street this week and let them know.

Update: The bill has been put before the Victorian Parliament, amid protests from 15 or so people outside. Mostly men from what I saw on the news. I just don't get it. Women don't go round telling us men what to do with our balls apart from "Christ, can't you leave them alone for five minutes?"

A happy ex-pat, but also an Angry Exile

I think I should start this blog by saying that as much as the state of affairs in the UK depresses me I'm still quite fond of the place, and also that as much as I love it here in Australia I'm not blind to its faults. Nor were my reasons for emigrating confined to feeling that the UK was fast becoming a shithole run by a bunch of self serving power crazed tossers who could only be replaced by a slightly different bunch of self serving power crazed tossers. It's fair to say that politicians are broadly the same the world over and I didn't really expect Australia to buck the trend a great deal in that respect. In fact my ending up living in Australia has as much to do with knowing that my wife wanted to be here as anything else, but it didn't take long for me to appreciate the place for other reasons. Better weather for one, though here in Melbourne it can be at least as unpredictable as in the UK. Warmer generally, but it speaks volumes that the rest of Australia takes the piss out of the weather in Victoria and the way that Victorians talk weather almost as much as the Poms. And having been lucky enough to have done some traveling here, including a drive from the southern coast to Darwin in the north, I've become fascinated with this astonishing country.

However, that's not really what this blog is going to be about. The thing is that I just don't miss Britain. Family and friends, yes, but the UK itself I miss slightly less than a bad dose of flu. Is that sad? Certainly it seems to be unusual in an ex-pat, and weirdly I experience feelings of guilt for not being homesick rather than the occasional pangs of homesickness that seems to be the norm for Poms in Australia. I can't say I didn't shed a tear when I got on the plane because saying goodbye to family at the airport is the toughest thing I've had to do, but looking out of the window as the plane took off all I could think was "thank fuck for that".

I wish I did miss the UK and when asked by Aussies what it's like I can think of dozens of reasons for visiting, dozens of things to do there and dozens of places worth seeing. In my opinion the UK is a fantastic place to visit... but I wouldn't want to live there anymore. Not with the nanny state looking over my shoulder wagging a disapproving finger all the bloody time and helping itself to half the contents of my wallet supposedly for my own good. Not with ID cards and DNA databases and surveillance and monitoring and regulations all inflicted on an innocent majority for their own good. Not with an ever growing army of parasitic little pricks administering and enforcing and kissing each others arses to get ahead. Don't get me wrong, Australia is no libertarian utopia and I'll be an Angry Exile about that as well from time to time. But mostly I'll be lamenting anything and everything I come across that makes me say thank Christ we're out of there.