Don't you dare say that.

Guido mentions that there's an injunction in the UK that not only gags the media in respect to bits of the Tiger Woods but prevents them from mentioning the existence of the injunction itself, and that this has got far enough up someone's nose for it to end up on Wikileaks. So I followed the link and saw this:

Tiger Woods UK media suppression order made by Justice Eady on 10 Dec 2009 as forwarded by media lawyers Schillings.

Quelle surprise, Eady and Schillings (who appear to not have a Wikipedia article funnily enough - wonder if there used to be one).

Seriously guys, who gives a shit? I don't know why the media are so fascinated by a golfer who's been wetting his cock somewhere he shouldn't but really his wife is the only one with a reason to get worked up about it. Still, it's not exactly national security so why the fuck shouldn't the tabloids waste their ink printing it and their readership waste their time reading it. The only thing about the whole issue that I'm at all interested in is that once again someone is attempting to suppress comment about it. Were it not for that (and the $1.5 million we Victorian taxpayers generously shoved into his wallet) I personally wouldn't give a flying fuck. Now, thanks to Schillings and Mr Justice Eady, I'm inclined to do some Googling even though I fully expect to find nothing worth looking for. I'm only doing it because someone doesn't want me to.

Won't somebody think of the chiiiiiiiiiiiiiiilllldren?

Dick Puddlecote is wound up about another smoking story, and with good cause because this one comes with extra stupid. Lily Allen and Lady Gaga have each smoked on stage [gasp sharply..... and then cough theatrically]. This caused one alleged Lily Allen fan* to say that it ruined the night for him and his 17 and 15 year old kids, which in turn caused Dick Puddlecote to say:

When questioned further, Mr Hall said that references to spending ages giving head, post-coital wet patches, and fucking the girl next door were fine for his little darlings, but this was just too much.

Mr Hall, born in the smoke-filled 50s but seemingly still quite healthy, was last seen disappearing up his own gullible, self-righteous arse.

Quite. I'd like to say something approving about Lily Allen at this point but since I reckon she was probably only able to light up at all by temporarily removing her own head from her self-righteous arse I think I'll give it a miss. Personally I'd be pissed off if she came into my home and lit up. For that matter I'd be pissed off if she came in to my home and just stood there, but the owner of a property gets to set the rules and if, as is almost guaranteed these days, the owners of the concert venue where Lily Allen attempted mass murder by ciggie smoke had already banned smoking before the government blanket ban she wasn't rebelling so much as just being rude. However, that's between them and her, not whiny pricks like Mr Hall. Fuck the pair of 'em, but especially him.

Fuck you all. Fuck you right in the lungs.

Still, the increasing hysteria about smoking and the way people are likely to treat a bit of fag smoke as equivalent to being violently bottled in the face is really starting to piss me off. For one thing it's tempting me to go down the shops for a pack of Bensons just as a 'fuck you' message, but I've now been an ex-smoker long enough to have grown to dislike fag smoke and ashtrays. So do you know what I do about it, and I'm asking this of wankers like Mr Hall? Let me give you an example. Couple of days ago I was talking to a smoker who lit one up up, so I took a small step backwards and we carried on talking as before. No theatrical coughing or being a cunt because even though I've grown to dislike the smell of the smoke a few inches of extra space was all that was necessary. I doubt he even noticed, or if he did thought I was just slouching against the wall for a bit (and also I did genuinely want to slouch against the wall for a bit too).

I realise I'm doing this all wrong because as an ex-smoker I'm expected to be a pompous, twatty, crusading, anti-smoking zealot who wants to impose his will on others but I just can't get worked up enough about my new dislike for the smell of smoke and ashtrays to want to become a bossy cunt. Don't smoke in my home but beyond that I don't care. Smoke, or do not smoke, and if I have a problem rest assured that I'll deal with it simply by moving away from the smoke without whining to anyone about it. It's not like smoke is equivalent to actual violence or anything, is it?

[Avatar is] rated PG-13 for intense epic battle sequences and warfare, sensuality, language and some smoking.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

* I'm not saying he isn't a Lily Allen fan as well as his kids, but since he's 52 I wouldn't be shocked if he suggested getting tickets to see that Alan Lillee bloke and wondering if he's related to Dennis.

Never come between an Ambush Predator and its prey.

JuliaM has sunk her gloriously outsize teeth into one of 'the open borders crowd' that she found over at her favourite hunting ground. According to the wallet left among the splintered bones at the mouth of the cave it was someone called Jon Burnett. I can see where Burnett was coming from because in an ideal world you wouldn't be locking up children in detention centres, and I'm very much a member of the 'open borders crowd' myself. However, I'm not so foolish as Jon Burnett to go wandering around near cave entrances surrounded by suspicious piles of bones, at least not without taking appropriate precautions - my membership of the 'open borders crowd' has a very important caveat attached to it that I'm fairly sure will prevent me from anything worse than a 'MY FOOD - KEEP AWAY' type growl. Feeling confident I stepped far enough into the cave to leave this comment:

Sure, open the gates, no problem with that. But make it bloody clear that everyone coming over the new and incredibly porous border is absolutely 100% on their own. No help from the state at all because the taxpayers no longer want to be forced to foot the bill. Anyone coming in therefore needs either a realistic plan to support themselves or a willingness to get by on whatever they can attract in the way of voluntary/charitable support (and not the tax paid fake kind either). There will be a lot of grief initially since some will think it's posturing and come in anyway thinking to call the bluff. When they're told in no uncertain terms that no really, this is how it is from now on because the country's broke, so sorry it's either work, starve, beg or try somewhere else there won't be a need for detention centers or the UKBA for long.

Won't happen of course. The main parties would prefer to continue hosing money into the twin black holes of border security and handing out other people's money to anyone who gets in having thought of a halfway convincing sob story. Psst, secret to any wannabe asylum seeker heading to Britain. Simply say "Oh, I just had to escape from Cafeteria. They had no smoking ban and we were being oppressed and I had to think of my chiiiiildren." But be ready to go seek asylum elsewhere when Britain really does run out of money.

Jon Burnett seems to be blaming the government for the kids and their parents being taken in dawn raids and held at Yarl's Wood, but I feel his mistake - and possibly the reason he's currently being turned into thylacosmilus dung - is that he doesn't seem to consider that the government are also the reason that it was necessary to do that in the first place. By being both evil enough to rob from its own citizens in order to support anyone who rocks up with a semi-plausible reason for leaving their original country and to then snatch and lock up those whose reasons are later decided not to be so plausible after all it is doubly to blame.

As I thought there was a slight rumble from the back of the cave and a pair of eyes turned in my direction.

"Sure, open the gates, no problem with that. But make it bloody clear that everyone coming over the new and incredibly porous border is absolutely 100% on their own."

That would help, but there must be some limits, surely? Otherwise, you will eventually change the structure of the country completely...

As I said over there, I don't think so. Well, not necessarily anyway. If, as is currently the case, you are going to be all multi-culti about it then limits won't help. The country will change anyway and at best all the limits will achieve is to slow it. Therefore open borders are bad because the change will happen even faster, yes? Ah, well, yes if you do nothing else but not if you change the multi-culti bit too. Even if you throw the borders wide open the pace of change can be close to a natural one providing you make a few things crystal clear:

• There are no handouts courtesy of hitherto robbed taxpayers. If you can find a charitable organisation supported by voluntary donations to help you then knock yourself out.
• Go where you will and do as you like but no state help is available to get you settled in - see above.
• English, motherfucker, do you speak it? Actually we don't mind if you never learn English but you'll be making your own life much more difficult. And in case you hadn't already guessed there is no help available from the state.
• Feel free to practise your religion and continue your cultural traditions as far as they comply with UK law. If your faith requires you to paint yourself pale blue and stand naked in the corner of your kitchen every other afternoon nobody will care much, but if it involves sacrificing your neighbours on a bonfire then the British people will only welcome you if you can move into a spare house in Downing Street.
• Serious breaches of UK law will result in deportation to your country of birth on conviction (allowing for appeal, natch). If that means sending you into danger, boohoo. We'll get over it.
• If you want to build a giant culinary temple in which you and your co-religionists can stand naked in corners every other afternoon feel free to make or borrow money and buy some land near the paint shop. There will not be any... yeah, don't really need to say it anymore, do we?
• Etc etc etc.

In short you make the country open yet very unattractive to spongers and simultaneously make it much easier for people like Deva Kumarasiri to get in. A point will be reached where nobody but self reliant The only other objection is availability of resources, but when pressures build to the point that they're being spread too thin fewer and fewer people will want to come.

Personally I'm already at a loss to explain why anyone wants to go to a cold, soggy rock in the North Atlantic which is already one of the most densely populated bits of real estate in the world. It can only be the money - pay them and they will come, but stop paying them and they'll find somewhere else regardless of how open the borders are.

For what it's worth I feel this approach reflects reality. Almost every country has porous borders because barring luck with geography or a Kim Jong-Il type nutter in control you simply can't secure them completely. For that matter even then it's hard. The DDR couldn't despite chain link fences topped with razor wire and lined with minefields. Sure, that particular border was pretty tight and was designed more with emigration than immigration in mind, but the point is that people did get through it from time to time.* And that was a small country with a highly authoritarian government that was pretty determined to close the border, and a reasonable sized conscript military to help them do it. The UK, still more free than the DDR was, and also a densely populated, fairly wealthy (still) and advanced nation on a fucking island with only, can't manage it either. Even if you managed to make the ports, airports and tunnel secure, with 12,500 km of coastline a small boat can always sneak in at night unless you go to some fairly extreme measures. This would probably involve setting a large proportion of the population to a constant watch of the sort not seen even during WWII, and since that in turn would likely mean a British Honecker - or Adam Sutler** if you prefer - it would make Britain as unattractive a place to go as old East Germany was. And since this topic comes up here in Oz as well I think it's worth mentioning that if the UK can't manage it with three times the population, more than twice the wealth and only half as much coastline, then Australia simply doesn't have a fucking prayer.

For both my favourite countries (yes, in spite of everything I'm still very fond of the land of my birth) the best option would seem to be making them attractive to people who would come in, integrate, settle and set about making the life they want for themselves, and at the same time putting off spongers simply by telling them that there's no money, accommodation or help on offer but what is available from private citizens and charities through the goodness of their hearts. What good does a hard limit do a country? Say you set a limit of 9,999 and the ten thousandth is fantastic heart surgeon or has designed a prototype for a net power fusion reactor - do you tell them to take their talents and fuck off to make a contribution elsewhere because you've already filled the places for this year? It's cutting off your cock to spite your bollocks really, and worse still it's inevitable. It might not be every year and if it's not the first person after your quota is full it'll be someone further along the queue, but sooner or later there'll be someone you'd want that your own limits force you to refuse entry. Alternatively you could take the lowest skilled migrant who's already been admitted and chuck 'em out again, but you'd soon get a reputation for being a bit of a bastard and this would put off anyone but the most elite skilled workers. After all, if you were only the 50th best heart surgeon in the world you might not feel too confidant about your long term future since the 49th best might want in one day and they could already have run out of burger flippers to kick out. But an open border with no state help for the new intake takes the pressure off of people who really want to be there and build their new lives themselves while providing that all important disincentive to those who'd walk off the plane with their hands held out.

UPDATE: I should add that of course I realise that there's an element of hypocrisy involved here since I'm one of the most recent in a long line of migrants to a country that was basically nicked off the indigenous people, and yes I've made no effort to learn any language that was spoken round here before the First Fleet arrived. Guilty as charged, but in my defence being all precious and righteous about it and refusing to migrate would have achieved precisely fuck all for any Aborgines and I'd probably now be single, consuming epic amounts of porn and visiting the doctor regularly for the blisters on the palm of my right hand.

* Mostly in one direction because inward migration was minimal. This was due less to the nature of the border and more to the place being a depressing shithole run by a weapons grade fucknuts that would only seem an attractive place to live to someone who'd already run out of windows to lick in one country. However, this is still not a reason for to vote for Gordon Brown next year.
** Or even Adam Susan for the purists.

I bloody knew it.

Cats are bastards and they're working to their own fucking agenda.

There seem to be two kinds of people in the world: those who don't understand cats, and those who think cats are kind of douchebags.

Unfortunately for cat lovers, science has kind of come down on the side of that second group. Research has revealed that a lot of the quirky and even cute things your kitty does are actually signs that your cat is kind of a dick.

Of course when the alternative is the deranged barking and shitting machine that goes in paroxysms of ecstasy every time he sees us holding anything vaguely resembling a lead the cats have a lot going for them. The worst thing about dogs? I think it's when they have a shit. It's not that we have to go walkies with pockets full of plastic bags, or that no plastic bag is thick enough to disguise the softness or hide the horrible warmth of the thing. No, the most revolting bit is the expression of deep concentration he wears, like he's determined to get this task precisely right, whilst he cranks it out. And the fact that I'm often on the other end of a bit of bloody lead while he does it.

Still, he brings back tennis balls when we throw them away. How about that, eh, cats? You lot just sit there and look bored.



Fuckers have an answer for everything, don't they?


UPDATE: In response to Dick Puddlecote, who is not happy about my dissing cats, I'd like to say this. As a life long cat... owner? Probably the wrong word but you know what I mean. Anyway, I've always lived with them, feel that after all that time I've earned the right to diss 'em, and generally do so under the baleful stare of the most recent pair. Anyhow, they got their own back by leaving a furball/vomit minefield just outside the bedroom door sometime during the night. No doubt this was their way of sympathising with my complaints about having to pick up dog shit and reintroducing variety into my life my giving me something to clear up from the other end. Unfortunately I've had to use so much fucking carpet cleaner that I'm worried I may have broken a UN treaty on chemical warfare.

Tin foil hats on standby.

What the fuck? I don't want to sound too much like a long term user of Bacofoil headgear but Is this feels like a step towards world government. Or if you're that way inclined another step.

The 400-year-old freedom of the high seas would be lost under United Nations plans to limit environmental damage.

Military forces of several nations are in discussions with conservationists over pooling surveillance resources to enforce the changes.

...

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea came into force in 1983 and enshrined the 17th-century concept of the freedom of the seas. But while being on the high seas puts ships outside the jurisdiction of any one country, the small print of the law dictates that nations ensure that no undue damage is caused.

“The freedom of the high seas has always been accompanied by attendant responsibilities in the Law of the Sea Convention,” said Jeff Ardron, director of the high seas programme for the Marine Conservation Biology Institute.

“They were not unfettered freedoms — they have just been treated that way. The time has come when we are finally going to implement the Law of the Sea Convention as it was intended,” he told the Natural England conference, entitled Sea Change: securing a future for Europe’s seas.

Am I paranoid or am I right to bet that somewhere some cunt is rubbing their hands together in glee at the thought of fucking up sea steading before it even gets off the ground into the water?

Have a happy redneck Christmas.

I suppose if Rudolph's nose was bright enough for Santa to steer his sleigh by one foggy Christmas Eve it must make aiming easier for deer hunters too.

Oh no...

And I thought Big Brother was bad. Has the country really reached the point where the best it can offer in the way of TV is pigs on a fucking trampoline? And on this side of the world a couple of years ago the Aussie version of the show included a man calling himself Col E Flower who played music on vegetables. I can't bear to embed a clip of it - go look for it on You Tube yourself if you must and if you have the brain cells to spare. Personally even if I knew I was fucking immortal I'd object to wasting the minutes needed to see it again, and I'm glad I'm going to miss the bouncing pig altogether.

Bread and fucking circuses, this. I despair, I really do.

The climate at Copenhagen.

Clearly sceptics aren't going to support anything worked out at Copenhagen, and if even serious greens can come out against it albeit for polar (aha) opposite reasons, what's the fucking point? Just a band wagon for politicians and hangers on to jump on? It so often looks that way to me.

No shit, Sherlock.

Top Gear stages things for TV? Fuck me, how those three sleep at night I'll never know. Especially that bouff haired twat Clarkson, having had the gall to openly admit on TV and in print that bits of Top Gear are scripted, worked out ahead of time and stages, he ... er, oh, no secret then? As one commenter here puts it:

...it’s obvious that Top Gear films are set up, or otherwise I must have missed the murder trial over the black Stig.

Love it or hate it there's no point slagging off Top Gear for not being the 100% honest documentary series that it clearly isn't. I suspect this is just tall poppy syndrome. Or tall bouff haired twat if you prefer. Why don't the wamkers whining about this complain about the fucknuts in Downing Street pretending to be Prime Minister instead?

Tiger's wood.

Really, beyond his family and friends who the fuck cares? If Tiger Woods has been playing away from home that's up to him, and if it costs him his marriage and a massive divorce settlement tough shit. The only thing that I care about is we, the Victorian taxpayers, have contributed to the guy's fortune.

The world's top sportsman had more than 21,000 golf fans eating out of his hand on day one of the Australian Masters.

The State Government contributed half of the $3 million put up to lure Tiger to Melbourne, and has already got its money back many times over.

Okay, well done for not actually wasting the money, but is playing sports promoters part of the role of the state government? It may have brought in more than the $1.5 million the taxpayers contributed via the largesse of the government, but even if it doesn't simply end up being split between his wife and her lawyers this was money that the state shouldn't have spent. If they can afford $1.5 mill for a fucking golfer as far as I'm concerned that means they taxed us all at least $1.5 mill too much.

Work, work, work.

I shouldn't complain but fucking hell, a little more time to catch up on my favourite blogs would be nice. Every time this happens I end up leaving comments on things that are passing from the bloggers to the historians.

Yep.

Unfortunately.