Twenty Eight Minutes Later.

Oh fuck. Shotguns and chainsaws ready, everybody. According to Will Heaven in The Telegraph the zombie apocalypse is finally here. That's the bad news. The good news is that it's starting in Westminster so the infected dead can stumble around moaning 'BRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIINNNNSSS' as much as they like - they won't find enough in Parliament to make much more than a round of sandwiches.

In seriousness the zombie march has been organised by Vote for a Change and is a fun way of protesting against unaccountable MPs and an electoral system that's too easily twisted by the main parties to their advantage. Parliament of the living dead, they call it.

Willie Sullivan, a spokesman for the campaign, reckons that in the Houses of Parliament, “Instead of men and women with independent minds and souls, we see mindless ghouls shambling through the voting lobbies. We see elections in hundreds of safe seats throughout the land, where even a corpse could win a job for life”. He says the protesters want “a parliament where voters’ voices are heard, all votes count and MPs are truly accountable – a parliament that’s quite simply better equipped to do its job in representing us, the voters”. In other words, his campaign wants to abandon the first past the post electoral system.

Where Will Heaven is less than impressed is with Vote for a Change's choice of proportional representation as a replacement, although briefly looking at their site it doesn't seem to me like they're die hard PR advocates. Instead they seem to suggest a referendum on whether the system should change by a certain date (they suggest 2014) with the replacement system to be debated and determined after the referendum if they get the Yes vote they hope for. Makes sense, and increases the chance of a Yes vote I'd have thought. If the question is just whether to replace First Past The Post with PR then those who oppose both but are more anti PR will vote No even though they'd vote Yes on a simpler question of whether there should be a change at all. Aussie friends here who are broadly republican have told me that they voted No in Australia's referendum on the issue of becoming a republic and ditching Mrs Queen as head of state because they were even more opposed to the alternatives on offer - but they'd have said Yes if it had been a simple 'Do you want to be a republic in X years?' type question (some feel that the referendum was designed that way on purpose).

Vote for a Change are avoiding that trap and want to ask simply this: should the electoral system in the UK change? With all the troughing and people starting to wake up to the problem of safe seats - the 21st Century's rotten boroughs - they can probably expect some support. Enough to persuade the Browns and Camerons and those lined up behind them? Ah, well, no, probably not. Turkeys won't vote for Christmas, at least not until the alternative looks worse for them.


UPDATE: I noticed the FAQ on the Vote for a Change site recognised that corruption, safe seats and party cronyism still occur in countries with PR and other voting systems. Tell me about it - I landed in territory pretty much owned by the Australian Labor Party, and that's despite the system of Preferential Voting used to elect the House of Representatives ( ≈ House of Commons) and a cross between that and PR to elect the Senate ( ≈ House of Lords). The thing is I'm not sure that changing the voting system itself will alter that much, but what might is this. As pointed out by Daniel Hannan and Douglas Carswell in The Plan, open primaries more or less destroy the notion of safe seats since to keep it the incumbent must keep on the side of his/her constituents at least as much as the party - more so if recalls are brought in too. Even with the FPTP voting system unchanged sucking up to the Whips and party hierarchy will do you no good if an unhappy electorate can deselect you despite party support, or even force you to face re-election early. If Vote for a Change want to do something about the mindless lobby fodder in Parliament they could do worse than get behind that idea.

I am an evil man.

With vegetabalism in the news because Stern thinks it will solve warble gloaming I had to chuckle at this.



Guilty of all of the above. Just the one offence of beating, though I did actually beat it to death and then cook it. And I enjoyed it, which is probably also a serious crime. But then what about all the food I've given to animals over the years, and those that were sick until I've paid for a knowledgeable vet to make them better? Perhaps embarrassing for the animals to be in a hoomin's debt, so still wrong I expect.

Ouch.

€100 billion. Wonder how much that bonehead Gordon has signed Britain up for. And I wonder how much Saint Kevin will commit Australia to throwing away on the Emissions Trading Scheme, despite some people finally starting to wake up.

LIBERAL Party frontbenchers have begun to dump their support for carbon emissions trading after receiving party research showing voters are increasingly skittish about putting a price on carbon.

...

Several sources said party director Brian Loughnane told the meeting that when interviewers explained the implications of an ETS to survey respondents, they were negative about the proposed scheme.

News of the shift emerged yesterday before today's launch by Liberal ETS opponent Cory Bernardi of a highly critical assessment of the European Union's emissions trading scheme which estimates it has cost consumers up to E116billion ($190bn) since 2005, with little environmental benefit.

The study, prepared by Britain's Taxpayers' Alliance, says climate change policies there form 14 per cent of household electricity prices and that electricity generators have made windfall profits at the expense of low-income earners and the elderly.

...

Senior Liberals are now saying the party polling, and public polls, show increasing concern about the costs of an ETS. They believe the best political option is to run a campaign against the government based on increased costs to households and industry.

Another MP said voters were starting to doubt the seriousness of climate change.

It is also understood backbench pressure is growing from marginal seat holders who fear they will lose their seats.

The Taxpayers' Alliance says the EU's ETS "has failed to perform and is imposing serious costs on ordinary families".

According to the EU's own figures there were only minor reductions in most European countries in greenhouse gas emissions between 2005 and 2008.

Senator Bernardi, who is leading the Liberal revolt in the Senate and running a direct opposition campaign, said yesterday the British report showed an ETS was "a massive economic impost that has no real environmental benefits".

"An ETS in any form is bad for business, bad for families and bad for our economy," he said.

"With clear evidence of how ineffective and expensive it has been in the European Union, there is no way an ETS should be introduced in Australia."

Somehow I doubt that will stop it from happening. Rudd, Wong, Garrett & Co have all got religion on this, and I can't see them holding back without a vast amount of voter feedback against the idea. Maybe not even then.

UnScience at the Science Museum.

The warble gloaming poll at the Science Museum has attracted some attention on teh interwebs recently. First was the fact that of those who cast a vote on it those crying bullshit far outnumbered those crying 'Hallelujah, we believe we will be saved because we can throw away our incandescent bulbs and read by the light that shines from Al Gore's arse.' Then some found that they weren't getting the click to confirm email needed to make the vote actually count. Then the ayes and nays began to approach parity. Finally the counters were reset and by the looks of it, since I finally managed to vote and get the damn email, the poll was fixed. No, not that kind of fixed, I just mean they've made it work properly. We're now back to square one and the number are 847 arselight readers and 5,769 evil heretics... hang on, let me just deal with this email... click link... right, make that 5,770 evil heretics. All moot of course, since Gordon has saved the world now, or at least worked out how much it's going to cost or something. Yeah, right, no more boom and bust.

But something else I noticed on the poll page kind of echoes the attitude of some of the warmists (my emphasis).

Convinced? Want to spread the word? Invite your friends and family to be part of PROVE IT! Follow the three steps. Pick a point. Choose the evidence to back it up. Then send it on.

Funny, I thought a scientific approach was to consider all the fucking evidence, not just choose what suits. Which incidentally is how I went from believer to sceptic - there were just too many holes in the warmist case and what seemed like a lot of misdirection going on to try to hide them.

Sucking up to the expats.

Suddenly the both Tories and Laborg are interested in getting out the expat vote. Does that mean they've noticed they've alienated everyone else? I'm not convinced they'll have a lot of luck as the process of registering as an overseas voter can be a pain in the arse involving forms that need to be witnessed, but between the restrictions from the British end on who can witness them and Australian law (as if it's got a fucking thing to do with Australia whether I still vote in the UK anyway!) I really struggled to complete the forms at all. Might well be easier elsewhere but I still wouldn't be surprised if many expats don't bother - the same reasons for the apathy vote apply as they do for the 40% or so of UK voters who don't vote, except more so.

Personally I'd love either or both to look me up and send a begging email for my vote (HMRC knows where to find me), just so I can tell the both of them to fuck off. However, I'm in the interesting situation of having one of the troughers as my nominal MP, and one who has decided to step down at the election (though not paid anything back that I've heard about, natch). I had expected to tell my proxy to put my X next to the LPUK candidate if there is one, and failing that UKIP if they haven't been bankrupted out of existence by one sided application of the rules, and that if neither of those are options I was planning on spoiling the ballot paper some way that might at least raise a smile for whoever ends up counting it. Assuming that the main parties run to form and put up three examples of supine, vacuous, lobby fodder candidates this will still happen, but there's always the chance that one of them - and let's be honest, the Laborg is the least likely - might show some independence and libertarian values.

Meantime I'm going to have to get to grips with the Aussie system since there'll be an election here sometime in the next year.

All your genitals are belong to us.

I've blogged before on how the prudishness of some Western nations when it comes to the business of sex is childish, illogical and illiberal. It really should be nothing to do with government or law what consenting adults choose to do with or too each other's genitals, and to some extent they've mostly given up moralising the rest of us on the subject. Not, however, when money or even just the appearance of gain is involved. Oh no, then what is acceptable to the neo-puritans when given away for free suddenly becomes something sordid and nasty which must be punished. In other words women don't own their own vaginas if they going to try and benefit from their use. In many places this simply means that prostitution is illegal to a greater or lesser extent, but in Philadelphia they've gone in further by charging a woman with offering sex in return for baseball tickets.

An American woman who was charged with offering sex for World Series tickets on the Craigslist website has said she is embarrassed about her arrest, but did nothing wrong and is still hopeful of attending a game.
"I didn't do anything wrong, so I'm not embarrassed about my actions. I'm embarrassed about how I was arrested," Susan Finkelstein said one day after meeting at a suburban bar with an undercover police officer responding to an advertisement on Craigslist.
Miss Finkelstein's lawyer said his client is merely "a nice lady overcome with Phillies fever."

Only in America. Maybe she really did offer to shag the cop, maybe not. Who knows or cares apart from those directly involved. Even someone who opposes prostitution ought to be able to see what a stretch this is: either the arrest was because the tickets have a commercial value or because they're something she really, really wants, and how the hell does that make her a prossie? Is it so different from a woman offering sex in return for getting a big bunch of flowers on her birthday? Ultimately, if women are not allowed to benefit in any way shape or form from sex you have to ask if they're even allowed to have an orgasm. Ridiculous? Extreme? Sort of, yes, but by the sounds of things Ms Finkelstein enjoys baseball at least as much as some women enjoy sex.

Or maybe it was the wording of her Craigslist advert that got them worked up:

She might have dropped double entendres in her Craigslist advertisement but never explicitly offered sex, her lawyer William J. Brennan said.

If double entendres are a problem I really think they've got bigger fish to fry than a forty-something baseball nut.

Another one gets away with it.

Tony McNumpty McNulty, a man so egregious that I once felt 'cunt' wasn't strong enough, gets to keep the money he raked off as well.

The former Home Office minister was criticised by a formal inquiry for allowing his parents to live rent free at taxpayers' expense and ordered to repay more than £13,000.
But the Parliamentary committee, who decide MPs' punishments ruled he should be allowed to keep the majority of the money claimed on the home. The official investigation said it was "reasonable" for the taxpayer to help fund Mr McNulty's parents' house as it was in his constituency and could be designated as his second home.
Yet Mr McNulty himself admitted he only stayed there for a maximum of 66 nights a year. He spent the rest of the time at the nearby £900,000 house he shares with his wife Christine Gilbert, the head of Ofsted.

If you've got a very expensive monitor for Christ's sake do not play this clip:



Oh, you just appeared to benefit did you, Tony? So can you explain in what sense you did not actually benefit by getting the taxpayer to cough up sixty large ones towards a house occupied by your parents?

The report, published by the Standards and Privileges committee, comes just weeks after Jacqui Smith, the former Home Secretary, was only mildly rebuked despite being found to have broken the rules by claiming more than £100,000 after designating her family's house as her "second home". It will lead to more questions about whether MPs should decide on punishments over expense claims made by their colleagues.

Fucking hell! After all the fuss, fury and fallout six months back is this going to be the pattern? Slaps on wrists, token repayments and weasel worded apologies? Is anyone actually going to be told to pay back the lot and, since returning all that he stole wouldn't get a burglar off scot free, are any of the bastards actually going to be punished for it? I wish I could believe it but it doesn't look likely. And we were told that some MPs were suicidal? I think maybe what someone thought were wails of despair were actually howls of laughter.

UPDATE: Elsewhere in The Telegraph:

The report from the Commons Committee on Standards and Privileges into Tony McNulty exemplifies everything that was rotten with the now-discredited system of parliamentary allowances. It also casts serious doubt on whether MPs have even begun to understand what it was about the system that caused such anger.
McNulty ... claimed the additional costs allowance (ACA) for a second home occupied by his parents in Harrow. Over a period of several years, he was paid around £72,000 to cover the costs of mortgage interest, council tax and other bills.
The question of whether Mr McNulty claimed taxpayers' money to subsidise his parents would be a matter for the police, if there were some grounds for suspicion of fraud. Yet the morality of his actions does not appear to have troubled the standards committee at all. Even though his parents were living in the house, the committee accepted that Mr McNulty stayed there occasionally, thereby legitimising his claim.

On a couple of occasions where work has taken me away from home I've stayed at my mum's rather than a hotel. Did I miss a trick there? Should I have sent my then employers a bill for mum's mortgage, utilities and council tax? Would the fact that they'd have taken little time to think about it before telling me to fuck off make me less of a cunt for trying it on?

However, the ACA was supposed to reimburse MPs for expenses "wholly, exclusively and necessarily incurred when staying overnight away from their main UK residence... for the purpose of performing parliamentary duties". Since Mr McNulty chose to live just outside his constituency, it is hard to comprehend how John Lyon, the standards commissioner, managed to conclude it was "necessary" and "reasonable" for him to have a second home just a few miles away. Why did Mr McNulty not live in his constituency, and save the taxpayer £72,000?

Why did he not just flush himself down his own toilet and save us a lot more?

The committee also said that since he did not claim his full second-home "entitlement", there was no loss to the taxpayer. Oh, but there was. The expense of running a second home was incurred only because Mr McNulty did not live in his constituency, which is just a 30-minute train journey from Westminster. That was his decision; why should the rest of us pay for it and put a roof over his parents' heads as well? This point was lost on the committee, made up of MPs who presumably thought it unexceptionable.

I think there's has been a misunderstanding about the concept of a jury of one's peers: thieves should not have their fates decided by fellow thieves, and likewise MPs accused of exaggerated or fraudulent expenses claims sure as fuck shouldn't be able to rely on their honourable or otherwise friends in Parliament to smooth things over.

President Blair and Prime Minister Broon.

Apparently Broon thinks Blair would make an excellent President, though perhaps not as much as the grinning mutation himself does. Still, given Broon's inverted Midas touch how's that going to work? Will his apparent keenness on Pres Blair screw it up so that someone else gets it or will it screw everyone who hates the idea by ensuring that Blair does? The obvious solution is not to have a President at all, but somehow I doubt that's going to even be considered.

UPDATE: 1 in 3 voters lick windows for fun. Sheesh.

Andre Agassi and crystal meth.

Who died? Nobody.

Who did he steal from to buy it? Nobody.

So why should we give a stuff what he chooses to put into his body? It might be stupid, but if so it's stupid that doesn't really hurt me except for all the tedious fucking legislation dreamed up by governments to fight the drug problem that creates additional aggro every time I get a plane somewhere. And frankly I blame the reaction to drug use rather than drug use for that. Besides, I admit to having a soft spot for Agassi because he's got less hair than I have.

Liberty...

... you're doing it wrong if this is what your people think.


see more Political Pictures

Another green symbol under attack.

I can't recall when I first came across the problems with new eco compact fluorescent bulbs not working with dimmers and containing mercury, but it was a few years ago (and I have the interwebs to thank, natch). I do actually have some in the house, but only because they were freebies. I have to say that on top of everything else it's true about the crap light they give as well, which is why I have a cupboard full of incandescent bulbs that I decided to stock up on before the eco-tools persuade the Australian government to ban them altogether. So I'm glad to see the MSM making the same points, even if in the form of a blog.

After several years of using compact fluorescent bulbs, I've concluded that they don't last half as long as the manufacturers promised. Worse, I'm starting to worry about the mercury in them, particularly now that old-fashoned incandescent bulbs have been banned.

I recently heard from a man who knows a lot more about this than I do, having worked for years in heavy industry and specialised in the analysis of oil and gas samples. He points out that evaporated mercury got into the air conditioning at one of the buildings owned by the multinational company for which he worked (for reasons that I hope will be obvious, I'm not using his name).
"Spills were not noticed or cleaned up," he says. Over a year, roughly 80 people were permanently injured by mercury vapour. "Their teeth fell out first, then they got the shakes and malaria-type symptoms." It was months before the employer realised what the problem was and put things right.

This man was astounded to see mercury bulbs up for sale without a health warning. He points out that it's illegal to transport them by plane because of the high mercury content, and that it would have been illegal a few years ago even to sell the bulbs till the EU legalised them - at the same time as banning mercury-based thermometers.

"All I can say is that if you or your family have mercury bulbs at home," says my informant, "get rid of them. If you want to promote low energy bulbs, then go for LED bulbs."

And this is written by a reasonably dedicated greenie. Not so green, however, that he's buying LED bulbs yet. Like Al Jahom recently mentioned, LED bulbs can be as much as 30 quid. As with the lack of solar panels covering every roof, there comes a point where even the most die hard eco-friend won't install things that cost so much the potential savings are many years away. for most people loving the planet comes second to looking after your wallet.

Wrap up warm everybody...

... the Met Office reckon it's going to be a mild winter, no doubt because of warble gloaming, and on their recent performance it's probably best stock up on thermals and thick socks right away.