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Index

BLOGGOTH Page 7

Bloggoth Mission Statement:
     We aim to never raise our sights above the gutter and preferably to stay much lower

Oh I dunno

As I said, the bad language and pointless abuse on political blogs is the rage of the powerless. No need for politicians to sink to that level. Might make Today In Parliament a bit more interesting though.

Pensions

The announcement by the government on pensions looked jolly sensible didn't it?. An increase on the basic (eventually, maybe) and less means testing. All in return for an increase in pensionable age and people saving more.

But some details are absurd! What you pay into the second pension that will replace SERPS is apparently not going to be earmarked for you but will go into a general pot with a 'promise' by government for a decent pension in return. This is presumably aimed at dementia sufferers. Who else is going to be stupid enough to trust in a promise by government?

Unfortunately this government has done everything possible to discourage saving with taxation and extensive means testing. How willing are people going to be to save when they see that government will dip into their pot whenever it suits? How willing when they know that means testing may come back and all their effort will be for nothing?

People still remember the Tory's Black Wednesday because it was so dramatic. It was also very short lived and had no long term adverse impact on anyone apart from the Tories themselves.

The damage this government has done by destroying incentive is far more subtle but will be much longer lasting.

The not so well kept secret

A passing comment on Mrs Catflaps's blog must have rung bells with many people.

It's true and has been for many years. Whenever you go to any major museum or other significant tourist attraction, not just the South East - it was the same in Stratford on Avon and St Michael's Mount fairly recently - there are parties of French children around. And they are usually repulsively noisy and badly behaved, less disciplined than parties of English children. (Although given limited school budgets and the spiralling costs of coach trips, those are becoming increasingly rare.)

Despite Oldham, Birmingham and other localised riots I can't quite see our minorities causing mayhem on the scale that occurred in France last year either. If we have to atone for empire with massive immigration we should at least be thankful that our major possessions were lands occupied by civilised people.

Even if the anticipated problems from far right groups from East Germany, Poland and other Eastern European countries materialise on a major scale at the World Cup, I daresay it will be the behaviour of a minority of our fans that gets reported.

We British are continually told that we are the worst behaved and most yobboish nation. How much is the usual talent for self-denigration?

We shall fight them on the beaches

It has been a week of sustained attack on the enlightened and progressive (well, about shagging n' stuff, anyway) xoggoth website.

First all my uploaded files were turning into Greek like this:

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From various tests, the logical conclusion is that something screwed up in the transmission from my GPRS modem or something got accidentally set at the host end. That's what they want me to think. I know better, I know a deliberate attack by government when I see it. Probably a secret department assigned to Prescot now he has nothing useful to do. Hang on, what do I mean "now"?. Either that or it is a secret cipher indicating that Muhammed's aunt secretly married the descendant of Christ's hamster or something.

Then it turned out that my web hosters are part of Opus Dei, Mary Whitehouse division, because I have been required to remove my cheap sex aids page. Apparently Viz style content on making dildos from rolled up copies of the Times or finding cheap substitutes for BDSM equipment at Homebase is a threat to the nation's morals.

To my fellow cheapskate perverts, never fear. Steps have been taken to move the site to another hoster a bit more in keeping with the post Victorian era which only insists on content being legal.

I promise a completely new feature "Making vibrators from old household appliances" to celebrate the move and reinstatement of the page. In the meantime please try and restrain yourself from trying to turn that old Black and Decker jigsaw into a Rabbit without my expert guidance, you may do yourself a mischief.

Survival in a modern state

More news today in the TIMES (I have not succumbed to buying another Guardian even though those nature wallcharts did look rather nice) that new speed cameras will photograph drivers so that they cannot claim that they were not at the wheel.

It's just another notch in the continual ratchet of state monitoring towards a society in which the bloody government knows everthing there is to know about us. We are followed everywhere by CCTVs, have our homes spied on by satellites, required to give DNA samples without being convicted of anything, required to fill in forms to say why we have not got licences for things we don't possess, have our emails and internet usage logged. Soon we will be obliged to have our eys scanned and fingerprints taken just to get a passport.

Yeh, yeh there are ALWAYS good reasons, protecting the public, preventing fraud and identity theft, stopping illegal immigration, protecting children etc. etc. that those in favour of such measures always trot out to justify intrusion and control. Our freedom disappears in a Tsunami of pious justification. Examine the measures a bit more closely and often a) they do little or nothing to address the problem b) the problem is not of a seriousness to be worth the losses of freedoms or c) there are much more effective measures that could be taken.

AND d) The problems are usually the result of idiotic past and present policies by government that were/are totally contrary to the wishes of the electorate.

Given the overwheening power of government and the control it has over us, how it steals from us on such a collosal scale, wrecks our nation and wastes so much of our time with pointless beaurocratic laws, maybe we should seek help from some of the very people that these measures are supposed to protect us against. A little Mafia expertise would not go amiss. Maybe those maligned criminal gangs from Eastern Europe should set up their own night schools and colleges. They could earn the gratitude of us all.

I left a little note outlining this suggestion at a certain Soho "leisure facility" a while back and today got an email on behalf of a certain Albanian gentlemen we shall call Mr Alban. He was delighted with the idea. He even had one of his gang draw up a brief summary of the courses that might be offered:

1. Providing false alibis. A three week course. The course aims to give a thorough grounding, to the minimum extent necessary to convince a court, that you were somewhere else at the time of the alleged motoring offence and it was that other bastard at the wheel.
   
   
2. Advanced forgery. 12 weeks. How to forge passports and a range of other official documents without having to spend hours filling in incomprehensible forms, paying excessive charges or surrendering personal details to the fecking government.
   
   
3. How to get round money laundering regulations. An intensive three day course. A host of handy tips on opening bank or savings accounts without having to trawl through that draw in your spare room where you chuck everything, looking for an old water bill.
   
   
4. Benefit fraud for the gainfully employed. Six weeks. Guidance to the downtrodden competent classes on grabbing some of their own money back before it gets chucked at feckless chavs, useless immigrants and pointless civil servants.
   
   
5. Tax evasion for the not so rich. 12 weeks. Keeping some of your hard-earned from the clutches of the filthy taxman. A range of measures for those of modest means who cannot take advantage of the many loopholes for the very rich who can afford loans to New Labour and that have so conspicuously not been closed by our socialist Chancellor Of The Exchequer.
   
   

Self indulgence?

Moved to a new office. This one's an enormous open plan place and not as nice. Jeez, there's some really fat bastards in here, but as they can still get around and earn a living it's entirely their business.

Caught a bit of a TV prog last night on some really obscenely obese sorts who could not even move from their beds. Why were they all nude? Surely they could find something big enough to cover them with? Not sure what channel it was on, so maybe it was one of those Channel 4 soft kinky porn disguised as serious social comment sort of things, although as even the xoggoth sexual tastes are not quite that strange it's hard to think who it could appeal to.

I daresay food addiction is like any other addiction, to drugs or alcohol for example, and I am quite sure it is isn't as simple as just telling them to stop eating. But I am also sure I am not the only one to wonder how the situation is allowed to get worse in those extreme cases where they are not only incapable of earning to pay for their own food but actually physically incapable of obtaining it. What the hell are their carers doing indulging them in what is a slow and expensive assisted suicide? Are there state carers to be obtained who will continue to feed alcohol to alcoholics who are too permanently drunk to get up off the floor?

It's an idea though! Maybe I'll apply just in case. Lying around in the nude being fed vodka would sure beat dying of boredom at this job. I don't want any cheap Tesco stuff mind, it's got to be Smirnoff or Stoly. I've paid my taxes!

Guilty

In yesterday's papers, more about HO cockups. Since the Criminal Records Bureau was set up, over 3000 people have been wrongly identified as criminals. I can just imagine what the consequences could be. I have had a CRB check to work with the scouts. Had I been turned down I can imagine what rumours would have gone round our small village. Most think I'm rather wierd as it is.

But as so often, this latest failure was predicted by prophet xoggoth a couple of years ago.

Oh for fex ache!

I know little about him but he sounded a sensible sort so I had high hopes of John Reid. Well, not high exactly, but a bit higher than the micron scale elevation appropriate to most New Labour ministers.

But today he has proposed letting victims have a say in sentencing. God grief! We have spent centuries trying to evolve into a civilised society where sentencing is impartial and not a matter for vengeance. Now he wants to drag us back into the middle ages with reviews that sound like Islamic style courts.

Victims and their families can naturally have a highly irrational view of things. I mentioned a case in the local paper a while ago in which the brother of a man who was killed stated that "Someone who takes a life should get life". A reasonable opinion you might think, except that his brother wasn't killed by a murderer, or even a drunk driver, or even one who was driving dangerously, just a lorry driver who did what most of us have probably done occasionally, had a lapse of concentration at a junction.

Look Reid, I know this is difficult for you lot, but most of us simply want efficient administration where criminals are not released by accident and where the main priority in considering when or whether to release them is the extent of the danger they represent to society. We do not want another raft of bloody idiotic ill-thought out initiatives like those that have tied up resources in the Home Office in the past and which may well have contributed to many of the problems they have now.

More enrichment

I dont know why I buy the papers or watch the news, it does nothing for my blood pressure.

There's the usual about the third world detritus that washes up on our shores, sorry, I don't know how that slipped out, I meant to say the economicially useful migrants who enrich our society.

• 230 suspected terrorists allowed to claim asylum. Not to mention housing, benefits and legal aid, but hey! worth every penny. A few more potential Jihadis will make life more exciting. Travelling by tube was so dull before 7/7.
  
  
• As we all geussed, the suspect in the school stabbing case is a Somali gang member. Naturally, I fully appreciate the point in the accompanying article that it is our fault because they feel alienated in our society. If it wasn't for our terrible racism they would be as valuable here as they are in their own prosperous, peaceful and law-abiding society. I am quite sure there cannot be any maurading violent gangs in Somalia.

Talking of poor worthy downtrodden people

Our marvellous Members of Parliament I mean. I cannot understand how they serve us so devotedly on the pittance they get. So naturally I am delighted that they are preparing to award themselves another well-deserved perk.

Previously the poor souls have only been allowed to claim for a first mortgage on their second homes. They have not been able to claim for improvements that would raise the value of the property, only for decorations and repairs, you know, hand-printed wallpaper for £59000, little things like that. From July, they will be able to remortgage their second homes to pay for improvements and claim back the interest payments.

I was going to try and put together a full list of things MPs can claim but after a lot of fruitless searching came up with nowt. Then I remembered where I'd seen such a list a few years back. Yes! PUKIEMON is still going and here is his list

Naturally, it is not quite up to date as it does not include today's "announcement". That isn't a criticism of PUKIEMON, unless they got a tax-free staffing allowance of up to £84,081 per annum (up 16% since 2002) like MPs do, NOBODY could keep up to date with all the increases in politicians' pay and perks.

Hiding Of Information Act

The inverted commas around announcement above were deliberate. In fact there was no announcement. The change was not mentioned in the public commons debate on MPs salary last week. It only came to light when somebody made a Freedom Of Information Request. Maybe the intent to be very quiet about these things explains why it is so hard to find the information.

Oh well, even if they would have preferred to keep it quiet, at least we have a Freedom Of Information Act. Subject to supposed restrictions to protect national security. (Not to mention the ridiculous charges that can be applied by public bodies for actually supplying it)

But is information really always withheld in the interests of national security, or is it sometime withheld in the interests of our lords and masters? Difficult to judge the justification for a security argument when the supposedly relevant details are being withheld.

Is it really true that He-who-Must-Be-Stabbed slapped a D notice on editors to silence reports that operation Ore had caught up a surprisingly large number of alleged paedophiles at the highest level of British government, including one very senior cabinet minister? See the story "Alleged Pedophiles at Helm of Britain's War Machine, Massive Cover-Up" half way down this page There was a similar scandal under the previous Tory government and the blanket of silence on that fuelled suspicion of a D notice too.

What the hell have these allegations got to do with national security?

PS - D Notices

From en.wikipedia.org: "The D-Notice is a system whereby the government can mark certain things off limits for the media to publish on the grounds of national security. The D stands for defense." More accurately called the DA-Notice system, it is not a legal action like an injunction or a public announcement, simply something communicated privately to editors as part of a "voluntary" agreement, albeit that rather funny sort of voluntary agreement beloved by government that can end in police or legal action against those who publish anyway. See here.

Note the example of something requiring a D notice as being anything that might blow an operation or endanger the life of an agent. It also states that political and official embarrassment are not reasons for excluding material. Nothing about protecting ministerial nonces in that that I can see.

PPS - those links

Hmmm. Looking again at those sites quoted further up about paedophile cover ups in government, I see the one about Blair is on a far right site which appears to support the BNP and the one about the Tories is by the Socialist Equality party, who I have never heard of, but they sound pretty lefty to me. Who says you don't get political balance on Bloggoth? They actually have a lot in common in that both seem to have equal total contempt for all the mainstream parties. Who says too, that extreme parties on either end of the spectrum cannot have some very sound attitudes?

Anyone bring the goat?

Interesting comment in that Noncewatch item. Quote - "...Cherie Blair, has come under the spotlight for her indulgence in pagan rituals..."

She has gone way up in my estimation. Prancing about indulging in pagan rituals is a far better use of anyone's time than raking in public money defending the unearned "rights" of assorted parasites. I suspect she plays a vital role, just in case somebody has forgotten to bring along the goat's arse to kiss there is always Cherie.

Breast is best

This week we have also had to put up with more "news" of that repulsive toad Brownstuff, on one of his (no doubt costly for us taxpayers) jaunts around the country designed solely to push his own credentials as the next PM. Going to car plants, sitting on the A380 Airbus. It's an impressively large aircraft, the only one apparently that has seats big enough to accomodate Brownstuff's fat arse.

One of the self-promoting mini-issues he has raised at our expense is the subject of women breast feeding in public. Naturally Bloggoth has no problem at all with the practice, provided of course that these women have the decency not to obscure the view of their knockers with those repulsive smelly noisy little things they carry around with them.

But beware of fat ugly Scotsmen bearing gifts and don't forget the lessons of the Brownstuff Hokey Kokey!

• You take the taxes off
• Put taxes on
• You rake in all the money 'cos there's chavs to waste it on

First he reduced corporation tax "to promote business". Then, when lots of people incorporated, he put it back up again (but naturally it was far more complicated than it was originally). Then he decided to "promote IT literacy" by allowing employers to provide their employees with computer equipment without being liable to tax. When loads of companies had done so, he removed the concession.

Be very careful ladies. If Brownstuff is promoting a practice it is only because he intends to wait until lots of people are doing it and then tax it. Do you really want to have to enter your cup size on your tax return?

Airbus

Talking of the impressively large A380 Airbus, the most impressive thing about it is that xoggoth has played a very small part in building it. Hated every minute of it too. All the crappy checks and controls on aircraft software make it the most boring IT job in the world and the pay is shite. I hate bloody aircraft, especially civil ones; at least with military ones you have the satisfaction of knowing that your work may play a part in exterminating a few horrible foreign people.

If you fly on the damn thing and use the lavatory make sure you don't take the last sheet of toilet paper, I arranged it so the engines will cut out if you do that.

Making obscene images

In the week the Times published an interview with Chris Langham, the star of the political satire The Thick of It. The little I read of the interview concentrated on his career including his recent BAFTA and last year's Best Television Comedy Actor at the British Comedy Awards. The interviewer did not raise the subject of the pending trial on 15 counts of making indecent images of children until the very end as the interviewer thought Mr Langham might have stormed out and there would have been no interview.

Nice to see that the hysteria over this subject has calmed down to the extent that we at least feel that it is not just to treat somebody as a complete pariah unless he has been convicted.

It wasn't a very interesting article for me as I rarely watch TV apart from the news and have never seen the program. It's not that I have anything better to do, most of my life is spent staring at the wall, it's just that TV is such shite and I can rarely find anything worth watching. But at least the interview cleared up a puzzle by clarifying that 'making' images was legalistic jargon for downloading them.

I could never understand this 'making obscene images' thing. For one thing, if people were making their own images somehow and no children were actually involved, why were they being prosecuted? However distasteful some might think it was, prosecuting people for private fantasies is too much of an intrusion on individual freedom and would be unecessary; most reasonably balanced people can separate fantasies from reality and not be in the slightest danger of acting on them.

More puzzling still, how were they making them? Were they spending hours trying to fill in clothing on innocent clothes catalogue pictures with flesh from adult x rated pictures using the Paint Shop Pro clone tool? Or were they drawing or painting their own images? Most people have little or no artistic ability and the mind boggled as to what these erotic images might actually look like.

How did that get there?

Oh no! I was just going to check something in that article on Langham alledgedly making obscene images of children and looked in the usual place. As soon as I opened it, there it was. The evidence of my own guilt. I don't know how it got there, really. It must have been an innocent mistake. I was looking for my usual preferences at the time and somehow, just a momentary lapse of concentration perhaps, I got hold of it quite inadvertently.

Maybe I am just fooling myself. Maybe, in a moment of weekness, I acquired it deliberately. Perhaps I really do have these tendencies and I'm just not capable of facing up to the truth. Maybe I can get help before it's too late. Maybe I deserve everything I get. Perhaps someone should lock me up for a lot of convicts to kick around. I am worthless.

Yes, OK! I admit it. I am guilty. The proof of my guilt and my shame is right in front of me as I write this. I deserve the scorn and loathing of all decent society. When I got my case out of the van and opened it, there it was. G for guilt. G for G2.

The article wasn't in the Times at all. I purchased a horrible liberal politically correct namby pamby new laboury social consciency social workery civil servanty head teachery Polly Toinbee infested GUARDIAN.

I am glad I have confessed. If I can help others to come to terms with their tendencies and get help then in a small way I will have atoned.

I am so ashamed and feel I cannot face anyone again. I am going to the flooded quarry behind my house now. I may be some time.

Another loony lefty? Not entirely wrong though

The papers reported on Sunday how disappointingly dull Hugo Chavez's speech in Camden was. Hordes of SWP loonies, anti-globalisation campaigners (not loony at all) and other various lefties/US haters hoping to hear stirring diatribes against capitalism or America were instead subjected to vague ramblings about the sausages in Vienna.

Perhaps it was just coincidence but yesterday and today he has been pulling all the right strings with some proper anti-US rants that even the repulsive Livingstone would envy. I daresay he had read the comments and made more effort to play to the audience. Typical politician.

No way I agree with much of the socialist nonsense of the sort that he peddles. An economy that does not reward effort and ability always stagnates; and because the able and the bright are not going to give up the fruits of their efforts willingly, authoritarianism always results. Already there are allegations that Venezuela is becoming more authoritarian.

But perhaps we should be careful not to confuse wealth with priviledge, or showing real dynamism with exploiting the advantage of powerful position. I have to say I am sceptical but if HC really does divert more of the wealth of Venezuela's oil to its own poorer people and less to rich multinationals, good for him.

In Nigeria just a few days ago there was another massive disruption in oil supplies due, it is thought, to attempts to steal from a pipeline. Local insurgence is a constant threat. All that oil extracted from beneath the ground in their own region, all the attendant pollution and hazards and they see nothing of the wealth it generates. One bit of insurgency I do have a lot of sympathy for.

You plebs can keep your mitts off my oil though

Speaking of which, I have will soon have an oil well oil in my garden.

No it isn't stupid, the West Sussex Weald is one of the major areas of England for onshore oil and gas and some wells are already in production. This lot see a real future in the region. The Weald Basin, part of which underlies most of Hampshire and West Sussex, contains a limited but rich source rock for oil and some gas. The oil is light and of a low sulphur content. The oil and accompanying water has a potential value for geothermal energy too apparently; I think they mean it's quite warm.

There was a test well drilled less than 2 miles from me, just opposite the famous (to gay doggers anyhow) Vowels Lane car park. Not commercial apparently, but that was back in the cheap oil era of the mid 90s. Different story now.

So I have sharpened my trusty mattock and this weekend I plan to start digging. I dug a hole about a foot deep to extend the decking last weekend and it only took me a couple of minutes. If the oil is, say, 10,000 feet down, I can do it in 5,000 minutes. Put in an hour's digging every weekend, hell! I'll be a millionaire in less than two years!

You'll all be sorry you didn't say nice things about my blog then.

Good grief

Sort of watching (vaguely) something on TV about the Da Vinci code. Ah! but there is apparently some deeper mystery in the existence of spacing and siting of what might be Templar churches. Trouble is, it wasn't stated what the mystery was supposed to be beyond the spacing and siting themselves.

Lines drawn between churches are apparently 30 degrees to within a small fraction of a degree, supposedly an accuracy beyond the Astrolabe of the time which were good for about a degree. Er yes, but surely to improve accuracy of an astolabe, isn't all you need to do make it much bigger?

Why must everything have a secret bloody message in it? Lovers of ciphers can spend hours decoding the following. SEGASSEM TERCES RUOY HTIW FFO REGGUB.

Post boxes

This isn't good enough. Some people's eyesight is not that good anymore. Some of us are drunk a lot.

So why do they make dog crap bins red? Here's one in Somewhere In England Town. The ones they had in Derby were even more confusing in style. Once I posted my PAYE returns in one while staggering back from the British Legion. Never heard anything so they must have got there. Perhaps lots of people in Derby did it so they checked for parcels and letters before emptying them.

Maybe there should be unified collection bins where you can just shove everything, litter, dog crap, post, and it all went to a big depot to be sorted. Save a lot of money.

Mr. Big

Animals protesters much in the news. Who are these vicious people really?

When you see those demos, there appear to be two sorts:

1. Nice elderly people with white hair. They hate cruelty, because they do love their little poochikins. oooooh , Kiss mummy, who's a clever little boy then? Yeeees you aaare!

2. Horrible hollow eyed unshaven young men who all appear to be extras from a George Romero zombie film.

The first seem much too nice to be eco terrorists. One can imagine the second stealing old lady's corpses or freeing minks to decimate local wildlife, but they are much too dim witted to be effectively using technology and information to be hatching effective attacks on major corporations.

Somewhere there has to be a Mr. Big, The Bin Laden of the animal rights movement. We at bloggoth have finally tracked down this shadowy figure.

Mr. Big directing terrorists' attacks via his special hazelnut mobile

Grand plans and little people

There was an item in the TV news this week about the effects of withdrawal of EU support for Palestine in the wake of the Hamas election.

On all the fundamental issues I am entirely on the Palestinian side. On the practicalities, I have little sympathy. They have preferred to remain martyrs and continue in an unwinnable struggle, waste the bargaining power that past terrorism could have offered, replace a corrupt government headed by a pariah with one shunned by anyone with any influence and sideline a moderate president who might have offered a little hope of a settlement. If they want to continue their pointless struggle that is entirely their choice, but why the hell should my money be paying for it? Withdrawal of EU aid looked like a good decision.

But then they showed some of the consequences, the people dying in hospitals. Yeh, yeh, all emotive stuff and world decisions can't be based on that sort of tearjerk stuff. The bigger picture and all that.

Still. One cannot help but feel sorry for them. The world must have been a lot simpler before we had the worldwide media and these things remained out of sight.

Forget the refuse collection

I get really annoyed with comments that people should not vote on national issues in local elections, especially when they get called childish or immature for so doing. This is an example. Just as well I could never bring myself to be really rude to an opera lover.

Naive crap! Self serving crap too, as I cannot help but notice that these comments are always made by supporters of the party with the most to lose, usually the party in power.

As though councillors of all parties had nothing on their minds but how to deliver an effective refuse collection service or better street lighting. If that was true, why would they belong to parties at all?

The fact is that they are part and parcel of their party's organisation. The issues at local and national level may (sometimes) be different, but the levels are inextricably linked by certain common political viewpoints and by the allegiances of those standing. We also know that national parties do not hesitate to use national issues themselves when it suits them or to claim local government successes as an endorsement of their national policies. Why should voters be expected to make a separation which does not actually exist in the minds of the councillors and politicians themselves?

It is not good enough for a Labour councillor to plead that he/she did not agree with some government policy and should not be voted out because of it. It is even more idiotic to plead that, as just a councillor, they had no part in implementing it. Their contribution was a small part of the whole that made it happen.

If you want to be judged on your own merits you have the freedom to run as an independent. If you voluntarily choose to be part of an political organisation and take all the advantages that that gives in terms of electability and support you cannot then just choose to disassociate yourself from its actions when it suits you.

The levels are most obviously linked by political reality. There is very little real democracy in this country. Our elected representatives who should be listening to us and using their own good judgement on our behalf are draggooned through the lobbies like trained pidgeons. Hardly surprising, when it is so utterly powerless, that an intelligent electorate is going to seize the one mid-term chance they have to influence the much more important national policy.

The clincher that shows this strategy is sound and anything but childish is that it works. Immediately the results were out Blair reshuffled. I will bet John Reid has a pretty firm brief to take proper control of immigration and release of foreign criminals before the next general election.

PS

Aren't those comments about childishness and immaturity so typical of the intelligent political middle classes? Who are they talking about? Not a political opponent or blogger with a different viewpoint, no, just the British public. The contempt for ordinary people is palpable. When they call themselves socialists we have to add hypocrisy as they are supposed to be the champions and respectors of the common man. With such attitudes, is it surprising that democracy in the UK is such a sham?

PPS

Contempt for ordinary pople who vote Labour is perfectly ok of course.

That's what you get folks for making whoopee

News this week of a mother to be of 62, so I suppose it was topical to go and do a survey of ageing parents.

Britons 'put fun before babies' says that BBC headline. Yeh, tell me about it. Me and the missus had fun once and then the babies came along. One would have been bad enough but I had to get a whole litter. Well, two anyway. Seemed like thousands at the time.

"Men's fertility fades after 40" says a French survey. Really? I guess that must be a survey by TFIFSTTHBCKFFY (The French Institute For Surveys Of Things That Have Been Common Knowledge For Fifty Years)

Never say you do not learn anything on bloggoth, but here is a tip for males worried about their fertility which, as far as I know has only been discovered by me. I have never seen it reported anywhere. You can assess your sperm count with nothing more than the naked eye. Put a bit on a glass slide and shine a very strong light through it, sun from a magnifying shaving mirror is good. (But not right at the focus or you'll cook 'em). Movement of active sperm can be seen as a pronounced shimmering, the more it shimmers the more active sperm you have. Contrast this with the lack of shimmer 20 minutes later when all your potential offspring from that batch have popped their clogs. Never mind, that lot were all criminals and Labour politicians anyway.

Well done

To the British electorate that is. Apart from those common sorts, mostly in the North and London inner cities, who still voted for the bastards.

Reshuffle

The main news for me, naturally, is that gorgeous Margaret Becket is foreign secretary.

In my last contract I lived in Margaret's Derby constituency for six months. As I lay in bed every night I just could not rid my mind of the erotic thoughts that came from knowing that the gorgeous Margaret could have been lying in her bed only a few miles away. The xoggoth voluntary nocturnal emissions must have come close to the peak they attained when I was 15 (a good 17 years ago). Did she, somehow, dream of me? I like to think so.

Other countries have female foreign secretaries, or equivalent thereof, most notably the US. Condoleeza is ok for her age and apparently immensely fit but a bit toothy and no way a match for the gorgeous Margaret.

As the gorgeous, charming and incredibly intelligent Margaret goes about her business around the world I can see nothing but success ahead as her charm, beauty and sound political judgement honed by years on the hard left of the Labour party win over even the most intransigent. Palestine? The Iranian crisis? These conflicts and many others will soon be on their way to a lasting solution.

Mark my words, this is the start of a new golden age for British diplomacy.

The cover up increases

Fed up with this. If I must stay awake at work eight hours a day, I need a lot of coffee. Went along to the machine this morning and it wasn't available. The nice old coffee machine filler upper lady said it was infested with ants. Ants my foot. The machine is nowhere near an outside wall or window. They aren't pulling the wool over my eyes any more. This is a typical government cover up. The machine was obviously infested with criminal gangs of illegal aliens.

Look at the pictures of these hideous people. The cretinous look of violent criminals everywhere, piggy eyes, enormous ears and/or huge bulbous noses. Surely if immigration control just kept out people who were fecking pig ugly they would weed out 90% of the criminals.

Why can't anyone else grasp the obvious correlation of criminality with ugliness? Political correctness probably.

Just look at this lot on the right.

1. The top one is Mustaf Jama from Somalia suspected of shooting a policewoman.
   
   
2. The second is Kaliph Asmar,an Iraqi Kurd suspected of murder and sexual assault.
   
   
3. The third was on the same page of the Times. I lost the top when I tore the page out, so not sure what he's done but from the look he has to be a paedophile.

G'wan, punish 'im

"Don't punish us at the polls" is the Times headline over a picture of a harassed He-Who-Must-Be-Stabbed. In a typical soundbitey way He-Who-Must-Be-Stabbed has appealed to voters to "step back and look at the bigger picture", not to let nine days of headlines obscure nine years of headlice, sorry, I meant to say achievement.

Looking at those nine years is exactly what many of are doing. The current crisis over foreign criminals is not some sudden one-off abberation, it is entirely in keeping with a totally out of control imigration system since he took over. Record numbers of asylum seekers, record numbers of illegal immigrants, record numbers of inadequately checked legal ones and a major lie over numbers from Eastern Europe. Many of the difficulties have been compounded by the personal decision of He-Who-Must-Be-Stabbed to adopt European Human Rights into the UK. Everyone appears to have rights to the benefits of British society even if they have contributed nothing to it.

The rest is mostly shite. Wars, huge increases in tax and red tape, reductions in incentive, an explosion of benefits, loss of freedoms and huge growth in the expensive state apparatus.

Acheivements? Certainly there are a few. The stability in the economy due to making the BOE independent is a real biggie, I admit. But how much credit do they want for consequences of something they did in the first month? If you wanted that to be your epitaph, HWMBS, then you should have done it and resigned. I for one would now be lauding you as the greatest PM ever. Instead, you had to inflict yourself on us for another nine years. I would rather have had the boom and bust thanks very much.

Is that all? Well, it is certainly quite true that this government have put much more money into Education, the Police and Schools, just as WHMBS is always telling us. Unfortunately 'putting much more money into something" is not exactly an acheivement. Given the enormously increased tax burden on us all, a lame Death Watch Beetle could do that. The hard part is to get good value for the money that has been spent.

More tax complexity

Only vaguely aware of it before it was mentioned on CUK, but it seems that there is yet another tax increase tucked away in the latest finance bill. Now anyone using computers at work for more than the small amount deemed insignificant by HMRC can be taxed on the benefit.

It is not so much the idea of yet another tax that annoys. Heaven knows, who can possibly begrudge the money spent on pointless wars, chasing down criminal illegal immigrants it would have been cheaper to simply keep out of the country in the first place, a few hundred thousand more of those marvellous civil servants (all worth every penny in my view) higher perks and pensions for MPs and MEPs, umpteen massive failed IT projects and all the other essential expenditures? It is the shear complexity and pointlessness of it.

Like everything Brownstuff does, it imposes yet another major burden of administration on companies and individuals. The need to prove that usage is insignificant and if it is not, the need to quantify usage to estimate the benefit. Endless complexity, more arguments with HMRC, probably even more of the space wasting bastards employed by it to cope with this and all the other ridiculously complex, ever proliferating and ever changing tax laws.

Pointless because computers are not consumed by usage. Their reliability is such that they have almost always become obsolete before they fail. Time they are idle during lunch hours is time that is wasted. The benefit is therefore notional since there is no cost to the employer. Those from small companies who do not want the hastle of this law and want to avoid arguments with the HMRC on usage may well be forced to go out and buy personal PCs in addition to the work ones, even though one would be adequate for both personal and business use. Being able to point to one's own machine available for personal use may be the only proof they can offer that there is no personal use on the business machine. Perhaps running side by side. Makes a lot of sense, particularly when we are being urged to save energy.

I wonder if the amount raised in tax in trivial but complex changes like this one even cover the extra IR costs, let alone the cost to industry. It is high time Brownstuff did us all a favour and died painfully. Perhaps then we can devote our energies to earning a living instead of continually mugging up on the latest bit of complex nonsense to rob us to feed his bloated beurocracy.

AND..... another thing

All we wanted to do was open a joint savings account. What a bloody performance. Must of taken at least 25 minutes last week filling in a mass of stuff online. But that didn't open the account, oh no. Today we had to sign a form to send back together with two proofs of identity and address for each of us out of a limited list of credit card/bank statement/council/utility bills or tax coding forms. Surprising how one gets deluged with fecking bills and crap from HMRC all the time and yet when you need one you can never find where you've put it.

I would not mind if any of this was much protection against money laundering but somehow I doubt it. I can't really imagine a Columbian drug baron being unable to pay for the latest cocaine shipment because he can't find a recent water bill. When big money and criminal gangs are concerned there are always ways round these pettifogging little restrictions. All these measures do is add to the hastle of normal citizens for no good reason. Like so many other laws. Thought up by fecking beurocrats and politicians to justify their miserable arsewipe existences and increase their control over the populace.

Thou shalt

Another bizarre compulsion has embedded itself into my massive but deranged brain.

Every spring without fail, the missus spends hundreds of pounds at the garden centre buying plants to stick in pots and hanging baskets so she can forget to water them. Every summer, we must have the most expensive and tastefully arranged collection of brown stalks in the street. Maybe, now I have installed water butts at covenient locations on the opposite corners of the the house, and another by the greenhouse, their inevitable doom will be postponed until mid May at least. The butts have been a great success and have remained full from what rain we have had despite the missus's usage.

Late week I brought another as a reserve and filled it from the others. Now I find myself looking out of the window when there's a bit of rain feeling anxious because it it is going to waste. Maybe if I brought another twenty to put by the side of the house and installed a pumping system I could catch it all. What about butts to catch water from the shed rooves? Would my nice neighbour notice if I sneaked a pipe over the wall and stole the water from his garage roof? I want to cover the entire garden with water butts.

Maybe that's how religions start. Somehow I can never quite imagine that an infinitely wise and powerful being who created the universe and has an understanding of all things transcending all our limited concepts of time and space is going to think it important which way somebody is facing to take a leak. These crazy religious compulsions are clearly of mans' origin and mans' alone. Way back in history some obsessive-compulsive had a thing about not eating birds if they soared instead of flapped or a superstition about not eating fish on Fridays and thought "I know, I'll pretend it's a point of faith and then people won't think I'm a neurotic loony" Before long it caught on.

So that's a part of my new religion then. I have had a revelation and the Lord has commanded me to gather his bountiful liquid harvest. Like Noah in reverse in a small way. I can cover my entire garden with water butts knowing I am doing his will. And Homebase's.

Improving religion

A lot of expense and hard work but it's a small price to pay. Perhaps the other aspect of religion is the need for chastisement. A religious duty is not a religious duty unless it's tedious and unpleasant. Mostly, in any case. That happy clappy Christianity beloved of West Indians seems to be an exception.

Most other religions are miserable and could be improved so much with just a few minor changes. They should appoint me as secular advisor and I would soon bring the faithless back into the fold.

That awful praying in mosques for example, bowing down with your nose barely a foot from the arse of the bloke in front of you. Yech! Yet with the xoggoth touch it could become a joy. All it needs is for scripture to be altered a bit so that there were alternate rows of men and women and not more than a few inches apart. Naturally the scriptures would demand that wearing of any lower garments by the women would be unclean, (In a purely spiritual sense of course) as would washing. I would happily do my religious duty all day with my nose an inch from a woman's unwashed bottom. Heaven in this life and the next.

An apology

I must apologise to the many thousands of you who reply to my blog items every week. Well, ok, the three of you who occasionally do. I have been most remiss in changing the item titles in the Haloscan links after cut 'n paste, so when I do, your replies end up under the wrong items. Typical. Bunch of idiots, can't you get anything right?

Don't ever learn from your mistakes

I got sentenced to life imprisonment this week for raping a ten year old boy while out on licence from a "life" sentence for murder.

Well actually it wasn't me, it was a chap called Stephen Ayre. My slight confusion was due to the fact that they showed his picture on TV and the bloke did look quite a bit like me. He is much younger, true, but given my youthful appearance, I daresay somebody bent on wreaking justice against this paedophile could have mistaken me for him in the dark had we lived in the same area.

Coincidentally, Crime Watch this week appealed for witnesses to the murder of a man in late middle age who was fatally stabbed in the street. Police believe he was stabbed after being mistaken for a known child sex offender who lived in the area. They also mentioned another similar case. Cases of attacks on innocent people like this have been in the news a number of times before, most notably in Portsmouth a few years back.

Quite astonishing then to read in Tuesday's Times that one Jim Gamble, chief executive of the new Child Exploitation and On Line Protection (CEOP) unit has proposed putting pictures of child abusers online.

They say that "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it". In the case of some people I think we should add 'again and again and again and again and.."

Mistakes? What mistakes?

Talking of never learning, another history lesson that is never learnt is that outside interference in other peoples' countries and other peoples' cultures, particularly when there is no understanding of the issues involved and not even any effort made to understand them, rarely produces a happy outcome for anyone concerned.

The WOMD, the reduction of terrorism and the threat to the world justifications for invading Iraq all having proved hollow, only the better lives for Iraquis one has stayed alive, albeit on life support.

The rising scale of the conflict there, a civil war in the opinions of Iraqi and Saudi ministers who presumably have some knowledge, has been much reported. There was a more personal report in the papers this week about the miserable lives of young couples there. In SH's time it was possible for them to walk in public just enjoying the simple innocent pleasure of holding hands. No more. Now the secular state has gone and killjoy Islam holds sway, couples seen to enjoy even the most modest of contacts have been captured and beaten and threatened with death. Life in Iraq, even for those lucky enough to avoid actual death or injury, is miserable for so many.

If you want to read of the reality of life by one who appears to be a moderate and intelligent sort, not to mention a decent writer, have a look at this now famous blog.

But in HIS mind, he was right to interfere. Iraq could degenerate into a full scale conflict that not even the most pro war observer could call anything but a civil war or become a repressive Islamic state, removing the very last justification for our interference there and in HIS mind he would still be right. Everything HE does, from Iraq to health service reforms, regardless of the abysmal consequences we see, is right. Failures are down to everyone else.

There have been studies and thesis by respected American psychologists which I cannot seem to find on the Internet now (I have my suspicions on that) to the effect that successful politicians are sometimes so far off the scale of normal in terms of self esteem that they are every bit as abnormal, and therefore mentally ill, as those at the other end of the scale. At least the self harmer or the piss-sodden meths-drinking tramp in lying the gutter have very little capacity to harm our society.

Confidence is clearly a necessary quality of any leader but is one that lacks any sort of humility, one who cannot recognise, let alone acknowledge a mistake, fit to lead?

Do your duty officers

News that Class C drugs have been found in John Reid's house during a routine police sweep. It seems they were probably there when he moved into the house and there are to be no further investigations. I can't really imagine John Reid as a druggie and he is almost certainly quite innocent.

Nevertheless, as a New Labour minister, I feel he is morally guilty and should have been imprisoned for life. If police are doing regular sweeps of ministers' houses (for what exactly, bombs? bugs?) you would think that some of them would have the initiative to plant something properly incriminating.

The police get more and more useless at doing their real jobs.

Jabber jabs 'er

Of the three "crisis" for the government reported at great length on the news tonight, I really can't consider the report of Jabba's affair as of major import.

In fact I feel much more kindly disposed towards Jabba, perhaps because he offers hope. If an ugly blind old whiskery twat like Blindgit or an ugly fat uncouth dim bastard like Jabba can get a bit of nookie, then there may be hope for an old git like me. Frigging eck, they'll be saying old big ears had got a mistress next.

The kind disposition has disappeared. Must be a bloggoth record for a slightly favourable view of a politician to almost reach the third paragraph. I see the fat cunt used to take her around in his ministerial car at taxpayers' expense. That sounds about par for this lot.

Once again I cannot help but compare this with the tax treatment of us lesser mortals. Thanks to the scumbag Brownstuff I have to start paying tax on a £500 deemed fuel benefit on my van next year if I have any private use. Well, not quite any, the Inland Scumvenue (copyright pF) state in their guidance that very small useage such as taking an old mattress to the dump not more than twice a year will be permitted. I wonder if they let me off if I point out that Jabba took a lot more than two non-business trips to shag his secretary on a mattress and didn't pay any tax on it.

That reminds me, did the fat bastard every pay tax on that flat provided by his union? HMCR rules clearly state that accomodation provided by a third party by reason of one's employment is taxable. I bet he didn't.

Prisoners

The release of 1000 foreign prisoners back into our society appears to be a part of a consistent denigration of the entire concept of nationality.

This is not exactly an isolated instance involving the home office. Last year poorly based applications from Eastern Europeans, some using pro-forma business plans, were nodded through despite warnings by staff from our embassies that many applications were bogus. The decision to allow free admission to applicants from the newly admitted EU countries was based on a figure so ridiculously underestimated it can only have been a lie, not even civil servants are that incompetent. Police have been told to ignore illegal immigrants to concentrate on meeting yet another government target to remove failed asylum seekers.

In line with this nonsense, some seem to think that these foreign prisoners who have served their sentence should be treated in the same way as British citizens and released into British society as though nationality meant nothing. As though the safety of British citizens was a secondary consideration. It is not "racist" because it is has nothing to do with whether the offender is black or white or Christian or Muslim, it is about nationality only.

It seems to me that this is part of the whole rights without duties concept. There should never be rights without corresponding duties and/or obligations. We have to put up with our own criminals because they were either born into our society or given citizenship in accord with our laws. As such we assumed certainresponsibilities for them and they in turn have duties and responsibilites to our society. There is no such implied or express contract with foreign nationals.

Natural justice demands they should not be imprisoned or fined without the same burden of proofs that is applicable to citizens, but they should have no assumed rights in regard to residence or benefits (unless they have made adequate contributions) except where reciprical arrangements have been made with their own countries. That is not to say that every illegal immigrant should be immediately expelled; maybe there should be some short review process to allow those who can prove their worth to legitimise their status, but residence should not, repeat not, be considered a right.

The naivety of some is incredible. A little search on the net soon finds those who believe there should be free immigration and if that happened, who could blame enormous numbers of those from the poorest countries for coming here? But where exactly do these PC fools imagine that huge numbers of the poorest and least successful people from the poorest countries, with few relevant skills, are going to find jobs and houses in the UK? When, many years on in socially immobile Britain, they are still living in squallid ghettos with high unemployment, what will that imply for our society? I think the recent events in France are a small taste of that.

Even if all the newcomers are decent law abiding sorts, why do the PC types never consider the reality that people from widely different cultures have very different views about the direction of society and that massive conflicts of interest are inevitable? We would all get on a lot better in the world and have fewer conflicts if we learned to disengage and respect each other from a distance.

I would have more time for the PC sorts who think like this if their views arose from a genuine enlightened perspective or an all-embracing love of mankind. It rarely does. Views like this come from the professional classes who have simply swapped one set of narrow predudices for another. They have no problem relating to people from different cultures? I am not surprised. As a member of the professional classes neither do I. Most of the people from the minorities I meet are either fellow middle class professionals with perfect English and a middle class outlook or those from what might be called "public facing" employment, shop keepers, bar and restaurant staff or cab drivers who are all used to mixing with those from all elements of society and cross the boundaries easily. Not really surprising that we are scarcely aware of any cultural differences and see them as much more our own sort than unemployed youths from a council estate or farm workers from some Devon village.

From their middle class mostly white areas and a lofty superiority gained from knowing a few professional Asian engineers or black nurses they imagine they have a complete insight into the life of the working class potential BNP supporter in the poorer areas. They never consider that it is the latter that gets the very thinnest edge of the wedge of immigration, the largest numbers, the least educated, the least intelligent, the least likely to speak English, the least skilled, the least successful and most likely to be on benefits, those from more traditional and rural societies who are probably just as narrow minded and bigoted as their maligned white counterparts and almost all of the criminal elements.

The swap? From a vertical culture based on national identity to a horizontal one based on education and class. The contempt these people hold for the opinions and views of those they consider to be educationally or intellectually beneath them is palpable. It is usually so easy to goad them into accusations of "working class attitudes" that it is almost a sport to do so.

If anyone should wonder why the true concept of democracy, that the broad wishes of the populace should prevail, have not prevented the loss of Britishness in our own country that the great majority never wanted, there is the reason. There is no democracy because those who rule you hold you in contempt and your opinions and desires count for nothing.

Jabba Jabbers

Jabba Prescott has said that it would be "unfair" if people decided not to vote for Labour councils because they are unhappy with Iraq or other issues over which they have no control. That would be a very reasonable comment if the same separation existed in the mind of Jabba and the rest of the New Labour headlice but it does not of course. On their party political broadcast for local elections tonight there was an item on improvements to Tower Hamlets and the Labour government was mentioned more than once. If people heeded Jabba's plea and Labour Councils did well as a result it would be "A great day for Labour and an endorsement of our policies".

Because I am a guy with a profound trust in the honesty of politicians, I see no reason to doubt the main thrust of that PPB, namely that the Labour Council have done good things in Tower Hamlets. The bits of the estate they showed looked jolly nice, or at least by contrast to what I had imagined anyhow, and the middle aged lady who did the talking appeared very pleasant and honest if a bit dim as one might expect from a Labour supporter. I think the key to the whole thing was the reference to "massive investment". Ooooh! Where from? High council tax maybe? In Tower Hamlets? Is private enterprise rushing to invest perhaps? It seems unlikely. So presumably this is from rate support grant, AKA taxpayers' money.

Oh dear, I feel a slight attack of cynicism coming on. I do not know either way of course, but I wonder if this same level of investment was available when the previous failed Lib Dem administration was in control. Or is this another example of our Labour government buying ethnic minority votes in marginal seats? Like that story reported on Christian websites that Clarke wrote to every Mosque in the country before the last election promising to introduce the Protection Of Islam bill, sorry, I meant the Religious Hatred Bill, if Labour was re-elected.

I do sometimes wonder too, since our mixed society is such a colossal economic benefit, how it is that a high rate support grant is needed for Tower Hamlets and for so many other enriched inner city areas. Surely they should all be so prosperous that they are net donors to us benighted souls in the Shires and the Sexes. Surely there cannot be a tiny element of untruth in the "all immigration good" argument?

Clarke Flaps

Dumbo has launched an attack on the press, not just on newspapers but on individual journalists, for daring to suggest that ID cards, detention without trial, ASBOs without any conviction, casual application of anti-terrorist laws or the abolition of parlimament bill are in ANY WAY undemocratic or an assult on personal freedoms.

Now I could be wrong since I am going from memory, but I do not recall any previous peacetime government, not even that of the authoritarian Thatcher, actually descending into attacks on individuals. This government does it rather a lot. Readers of Private Eye will also be aware that the government is not averse to applying pressure on editors to silence individual journalists. Others will remember the pressure on the BBC over offending journalists.

Clarke's attacks rather defeat his argument. There is no reason at all why governments should not publicly and robustly defend their record or their actions against the political opposition or the press in general. There is no reason why ministers subject to personal attacks should not respond in kind or take legal action if appropriate.

But it seems to me that when any minister is prepared to use the full weight of the government apparatus to attack an individual for a political criticism, that thin boundary line towards dictatorship has already been crossed.

And Blindgit lines his nest (again)

While on the subject of headlice in this sickbag masquerading as a government, more news at the weekend that Blunkett is living at taxpayers’ expense on one of Britain’s grandest landed estates and has claimed more than £20,000 even though he has a home only 15 miles away in Sheffield.

I can just imagine the Inland Revenue allowing the rest of us to claim for accomodation if we had a home 20 miles from away our work! Unlike our lords and masters we common sorts can't even claim for accomodation at all when a job is expected to last more than two years. MPs of course can claim indefinitely at either their constituency or Westminster (probably both I shouldn't wonder) with no such restriction.

Naturally he has said he is perfectly entitled to do so and legally he is. Saddam Hussain or Bocassa could have made the same comment with the same legitimacy. Government make laws and they always make them to suit themselves. It does not alter the fact one iota that this is corruption. Granted, it is not remotely in the same league as some third world dictator building himself huge palaces while his populace starve.

The difference is one of scale only and not one of kind.

The Nepalese have the right idea - burn one for me chaps

Nepal is much in the news with the continuing unrest there to remove king somebody or other. I have forgotten his name, know next to nothing about the background to his seizing absolute power and what's more, I cannot be bothered to find out.

I do not need to. People have the right to determine their own futures and their own fates, provided of course that they are prepared to bear the consequences as all adults must. As far as I am concerned there are two overriding principles and they are strictly in this order, individual freedom and national democracy. All other arguments by leaders are self serving justifications.

I was really most impressed to see the sacking and burning of a tax office in Khatmandu last week. As far as I am concerned that makes the Nepalese wonderful people who, for the moment at least, can do no wrong. The reason we are losing our democracy in this country is that we have forgotten the art of burning tax offices and lynching state leaders.

The lie goes on

Plenty in the news too about people considering voting for the BNP. Given what has happened over the last few years why is anyone surprised?

Last week was an pretty average one for news about the enrichment of our benighted backward society.

A Bangladeshi woman has walked free from a court with a suspended sentence after seriously injuring a baby by shaking him to rid him of evil spirits because the judge conceded she did not know how to behave in the West. I really don't condemn her, do any of us think entirely independantly from our background and culture? But should we really be allowing people into the West with so little knowledge of how to behave in it? Or those whose culture keeps women so ignorant in a country that believes in female equality?

Earlier in the week, one of those TV documentaries of police fighting crime in the West end. With one exception, they were all from Kosovo or Algeria, nearly all illegals and hardly a word of English between them. Illegal immigrants have figured significantly in every similar program about major crime in major cities that I can recall in recent years. Perhaps the TV companies all have a racist agenda and are being selective about what they show but it seems unlikely.

News also this week that Muslim students are being taught to despise unbeleivers as filth at a college with strong Iranian links. One of the teachers stated that that chapter was not taught. Let's leave aside that that has been contradicted by some moderate students, but even if it is true, why is the offending text there at all? If a Christian text used in any school had chapters comparing Muslims to faces and urine and carrion, whether or not it was actually taught, would Muslims be happy with that?

Reports too that we supposedly take one in eight of all the world's asylum seekers. That will be nice on top of our 100,000 illegal immigrants a year. (UN figure).

News also that prisons are turning toilets to avoid facing Mecca. Surely the daftest pro-immigration lie is in the claim by the authorities that refurbishment was needed anyhow and no additional cost is involved. Really? Every public toilet I have been in has the cubicles along the longest wall with the cisterns on it and the toilets in front facing outwards. Fashion? No, they need to be against the wall because that is where the water and drainage pipes run. Similarly, they face outwards because that allows the most toilets in the space while also allowing one room to sit down. Strangely enough too, it is cheaper to make rectangular cubicles than parallelograms. No extra cost? Blithering crap! This is another expense to pander to the obsessive compulsive disorder known as Islam.

Our lords and masters constantly tell us that all immigrants are a benefit and they are honourable men.

The problem is that most of us have some difficulty in reconciling this Mantra with what the news tells us is happening. Ok, I know perfectly well that "Imam preaches peace and tolerance" or "illegal immigrant does a hard day's work in field" do not make good headlines and yes, those probably happen a lot more often and all the awful example we see are not typical, but we can also see, from those TV crime programs and the London demos over the Mohammed cartoons for example, that those we object to are no very tiny minority either.

It is not just the news stories that concern us. We cannot reconcile the mantra with the official figures either. We hear that some major groups have much higher than average unemployment and benefit receipts and cannot help but wonder how a lower than average rate of prosperity can increase the average. On hearing of the huge rise in HIV rates due to African immigrants we would be slightly more able to accept the bland assurances of the politically correct that the cost is a tiny fraction of NHS spending were it not for the fact that very similar sums cannot apparently be found to provide basic care for our own elderly or inhaler treatments for own diabetics.

I suppose most people's immediate concern is the frightening rate at which our local areas are changing. On this subject, nowhere are the double standards of political correctness, that inverted racism masquerading as anti-racism, more evident. It is a perfectly normal human need, for ALL races, to be among familiar people, those like oneself that one can relate to. It is why immigrants the world over all go to wherever their compatriots are. It is why the government had so little success in dispersing asylum seekers. Only the white British are denied this simple need. They must accept those of very different cultures in any numbers, continually alter their own beliefs and practices to avoid offence, be happy to lose their local shops, see the look of their neighbourhood change, feel like foreigners in their own localities, and send their children to schools where few other pupils speak English.

Nobody wants political parties to embark on tirades against migrants and certainly not against British minorities, they simply want quietly announced policies for proper control of numbers and of quality. Those are in the interests of all of us, regardless of ethnicity. Is it is really so unreasonable to expect that most entrants should be legal, have the skills to increase our standard of living, be healthy, not be hostile to our values and have the education and intent to adjust to our society? In short, to ensure that immigration really is the benefit we are constantly told it is?

On past form the answer is obvious. I expect the BNP to do rather well.

Let's hope eh?

I see the blithering Cameron is off to look at some Glacier somewhere to boost his hastily acquired green image.

One might think that a politician seriously concerned about global warming would be sitting in an office talking to experts and trying to put together some sound policies, but hey! that doesn't impress the stupid section of the electorate half as much as adding to carbon emissions by flying with your entourage to a glacier and wandering around in the snow looking concerned does it?

With any luck the blithering Cameron will fall down a crevasse and/or get eaten by huskies or something, then maybe the Conservatives will elect the leader they failed to elect last time.

Why is there never a rabid polar bear around when you need one?

Let's hope eh? - 2

Here is a picture of the blithering Cameron doing his bit for the environment again, this time distributing recycling boxes in Brentwood as part of his "green agenda". Gosh! I am impressed, I bet you did that for hours did you David?, oh I see, just for a minute or two until the press had taken the pictures; oh well, every little helps I suppose.

He never looks terribly healthy to me. Maybe a few more dedicated moments like that in aid of our planet will give him a heart attack. It would be in a good cause.

Talking of heart attacks, old He-Who-Must-Be-Stabbed is looking rather ill these days, what with the disasters in the NHS and the honours for loans crisis and the situation in Iraq which everyone in the world, except him and Bush, is calling a civil war.

If the arrogant bastard snuffs it under the strain there will be great rejoicing in the world, in Iraq, Afghanistan, in Muslim and Arab countries generally.

None of it will compare to the rejoicing there will be in xoggoth towers and, I would geuss, a good percentage of the UK.

Is it just me or?

The more I think about it the more confused I am about the current "crisis" over Iran.

I certainly have misgivings about any religious state having nuclear weaponry for the simple reason that a religiously motivated state is less susceptible to real world considerations than a secular one. It bothers me even that Bush and He who-Must-Be-Stabbed have their fingers on nuclear triggers instead than the more secular Clinton or Major.

The idea of a fundamentalist Muslim state having a significant nuclear capability cannot be countenanced. Leaders of most states would think twice about entering into any conflict which they know they would probably lose or which would kill enormous numbers of their citizens. Such calculations cannot be assumed to apply to a state dominated by a religion that believes in suicide bombings. If Muslims can regard suicide bombings by impressionable young men with their whole lives ahead of them, even their own sons, as glorious events, who can say they would not view the suicide of their nation in the same manner? If Iran, under the current regime anyway, looks like getting nuclear capability it needs to be stopped by any means possible.

But what I cannot follow is why we are drawing a line in the sand when the sea is still 300 yards away. As I understand it, the degree of Uranium enrichment needed for commercial power generation, which the Iranians say is their only interest, is a few percent. The enrichment needed for a nuclear warhead is over 80%. So why exactly are we insisting on no enrichment at all? why not call their bluff (if it is a bluff) and say that the degree of enrichment needed for a reactor is fine but we will take immediate action if they go significantly beyond that such that the only intended application can be a bomb? This takes away all their moral high ground about interfering in the perfectly peaceful intentions of a sovereign state.

Maybe there are some technical reasons why having a peaceful nuclear capability can provide expertise, facilities or material that makes a nuclear bomb simpler to develop. Possibly, I cannot claim to know much about it.

I also have a jaundiced view of human nature, particularly where politicians are concerned, that tells me that absurd stands are frequently made where no valid reason yet exists.

The undeclared war?

For the last item I was looking on the net to find the most violent countries and to check their religion. Not too difficult, the WHO (I suppose getting shot counts as a health problem!) gathers data on homicides. Oh dear! Brazil, way above the rate for the supposedly violent US and 80% Catholic. 70% Muslim Albania is way up there too. Not even the excuse of a civil war like most of the other top countries have. I rest my case as to the uselessness of Christianity or any other religion as a moderator of human behaviour.

Looking for religion and violence brought up a few other things too. A number of articles, from the dry serious ones to slightly more sensational ones consider that we are moving into, if not already in, a state of undeclared war with Islam.

It emerged from his recent trial that Nick Griffin had maintained that there existed in the UK Asian rape gangs who were following the teachings of the Qur'n in violating non-Muslim women. A total fabrication by a racist? But the same thing is reported in other countries, most notably in Sweden and Australia, see this blog. Check the responses and follow the various links it gives. Given that some of the linked articles you can find through that blog appear to be by respectable publications and especially as there are some by the usual PC types desperate to excuse it as all due to "alienation" I see no reason to doubt it.

So Muslims see it as their sacred duty to rape white women? That's the conclusion many seem to be drawing. But I think we need to be more specific on the reality and say that there are some useless migrant scum who are also Muslim that do. If I was a lawless younger man bent on a spot of rape, I am sure that having a religious justification for it would be very handy to ease what conscience I had about it. I note that none of these rapists appear to be Muslims from countries like Malaysia or Singapore or India. Most are from Lebanon and Somalia and other middle eastern countries with varying degrees of violence, repression and poverty in their societies.

This strange inconsistency of PC liberal thinking always amazes me. At the drop of a hat, they will defend the criminality of low income groups in this country as being down to poverty, deprivation, and abuse even though poverty usually means driving a P reg car or not being able to afford the latest phone, deprivation means kids watching too much TV instead of being talked to by their parents and the vast majority of kids are not abused at all in any real sense.

Yet they simultaneously have this curious belief that those who have suffered the reality of these things, had little or no education, grown up in a society where drug related gang violence is normality or where warlords or a corrupt state take what they like, have endured gruelling hardships, had to fight to stay alive, to steal to eat, perhaps seen their parents killed or even been forced to kill themselves are going to come to the West and immediately be model citizens and an economic asset.

They are not. Where you are borne is a lottery and it is not their fault to be borne in these war-torn poverty stricken areas. I totally agree that they are no worse than you or I would be given the same circumstances. It does not alter the fact that they are damaged and bloody awful people and allowing them in large numbers into Western society endangers us all.

Some while ago I mentioned that our failure to stop criminal gangs from the Caribbean was raising resentment against black people generally. In the same way, our failure to prevent lawless migrants from certain Muslim countries risks a backlash against Muslims in general by those who only see that these gangs are Muslim and not the more relevant fact that they are people from defective societies.

Changes in society? Give us rational changes by rational people

I was looking at that Evangelical site I mentioned a few posts back. Since the New Connexions group that has taken over our village hall is a member of the Evangelical Alliance and almost on my doorstep I think I have a right to find out what they are up to.

It all looks very tolerant, sensible and reasonable. I made the same comment a while ago about mainstream Islamic sites. Naturally, the authors are going to try and project the most favourable possible image of their religions and carefully avoid mentioning the downsides that exist for anyone not of their faith. One needs to dig a little deeper and look at what is tucked away on the minor pages, what is being said on the forums, if any, to question exactly what they mean by those vague and apparently innoccuous comments and to look at what some less discrete members of the same persuasion are saying on less professional sites. And as with any religion, you start to see what is involved in terms of loss of individual freedoms and how much they seek to impose beliefs on all of us which have no rational basis.

I have no problem with those who follow their own religion nor with them trying to persuade others to their views provided they do not make nuisances of themselves but they are never content to do that. They must form pressure groups and try and enforce the changes they want by law, imposing them on all of us. These lot are no exception. Yet if I decided Britain would be much better off without religion and went around campaigning for removal of charitable status from churches, an end to religious education and religious schools and making public acts of worship illegal I would be called intolerant.

I would not mind so much if their glib solution to society's ills, a restoration of Christian values, actually was a solution. Limits on abortion and a return to illegality of homosexuality, for example, might be small prices to pay (for most of us that is) if in return we got a major reduction in crime and a greater sense of comunity but we would not.

The ills in our society have nothing to do with the decline in religious belief. Crime in our godless British capital does not begin to compare with levels you will find in, for example, Kingston, Jamaica or Sao Paulo or the shanty towns near Johannesburg although Christian belief is much higher in all of those places. Christian countries like Jamaica, Columbia and Brazil are among the most violent in the world. In the officially godless USSR before its break up, the cleanliness of the Moscow underground and the lack of the graphitti was legendary. In our own country, crime is much less likely in affluent middle class areas than on council estates. Throughout the world, traditional rural communities, even poor ones, appear to adhere to their own rules better than urban societies and closely knit villages in our own society that have not suffered major development fare better than overspill areas. As far as I know there is no correlation of belief with socio-economic class or with town or country living.

See also this article

So what are the causes of criminality and anti-social behaviour?. Many.

The most dramatic effect on criminality, beyond the casualties of the fighting itself, is violent disruption of society by conflict. Outside of Northern Ireland, where the conflict was caused by religion, or some immigrant communities (often the same cause), not really relevant to the UK.

Poverty? It's one of them, but in the UK where real poverty scarcely exists, it's a handy excuse but greatly overrated as a cause.

Maybe it's more relevant that we destroy our communities in the name of economic progress. We follow high flown concepts like globalisation which treat people like commodities. We pack them into characterless urban estates where many people don't even know their immediate neighbours and further destroy any sense of society or nationhood by ghettoising our cities with indiscrimate immigration. Treat people like rats and they behave like rats.

We plunge our citizens into stressful changes in our society at a faster rate than our human natures can cope with. Contrast the high rates of violent crime in the former USSR countries with the low rate in China where necessary reform has been much slower. According to the WHO, all the European states with the most homicides are former USSR countries undergoing rapid social and economic change.

We destroy the sense of personal responsibility with a faceless welfare state that does not even try to distinguish the unfortunate from the feckless. We destroy too our social responsibility, the natural human one based on empathy for our own by donating the fruits of our labours, all we have left to give, to faceless strangers.

We have a justice system that does not project a clear relationship between behaviour towards society and treatment by it. One that oscillates between excessive understanding of the criminal and a right wing Judge Dread approach that fails to recognise that carrots are needed to encourage reform as well as sticks for those who will not.

Perhaps the single most important factor in the lack of social responsibility is that we fail to teach it in the first place. Partly this is down to a school system that has thrown away its authority with an absurd notion that children should be able to assert their rights before they have been taught anything of the corresponding duties and responsibilities. Much more it is down to parents, too many of whom are not fit to hold that office.

The role of more religion in curing our society's ills? Almost none. If the immense influence of the Catholic church and other Christian churches in South America and the Carribean cannot halt drug-related violence there why do they imagine a few more Sunday schools will have any impact in our own inner cities and sink estates? Even if Christians themselves were in agreement on the goals and methods, which they clearly are not, there is a lot more to being a Christian nation than just calling it one and imposing Christian morality through the law.

Question a thousand people of one religious persuasion and you can find a thousand variations of it. They will all assure you of their faith but they have their own justifications in their mind for this part or that part on which they do not conform to the official thinking; from the many Catholics who practice birth control to the many Muslims who drink alcohol. There is certainly no shortage of "peaceful" Christians at all levels of society who seem to think that casual resort to war is justifiable when god is on your side either. Personally, I have never observed, either in my private life or in the wider world, that those who have faith are one iota more honest, kinder, or in any way better than those who have none. Send a wife beater to Church and it is as likely as not that he will come home from it and beat his wife.

Give us a rational and democratic government to provide laws that address the real issues and the real causes. What the great majority of us do not want, and what will not help at all, is a reimposition of irrelevant religious dogma on our private lives.

The bloggoth awards 2006
Best anti-Brownstuff rant

Not often any blog could possibly measure up to mine of course but this anti Gordon Brown rant by The Devil's Kitchen is STUPENDOUS.

I feel I have really learned something here. My own rants about this filthy undemocratic scum sucking government, He-Who-Must-Be-Stabbed and Brownstuff in particular, have been WAY too nice and polite and deferential. Anyone reading my timid references to blenders up the arse, twice nightly stabbing, nitric acid in the eyeballs, faces strimmed off with Black and Deckers strimmers etc. might almost get the impression I approve.

From now on I plan to be really nasty.