---

Index

BLOGGOTH Page 8

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

Pink Floyd

Don't lose any time do they? Syd Barret barely cold and there are ads on TV for remixed reissues of Pink Floyd. Seems a bit sick but that's commerce I suppose.

I did like pink Floyd and have their LPs (big flat round black things) "Obscured by clouds" and "Dark Side of the moon" in the attic. Pink Floyd were very much my era. As was Syd, born in 1946 like me. Now he's dead. Too many famous people my age dropping dead. Hmmm. Maybe I should get round to doing something to make myself famous before it's too late. No talent at music, no major talents at all really. Who else is famous without having a major talent? And without too much effort, Napoleon, Hitler and the like are out, I really don't have time to invade Moscow.

Hmmm. Well, for examples of people who got famous with no obvious talent and for just a few moment's work there's always Mark Chapman. Or Brutus, Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earl Ray or Sirhan B. Sirhan. Funny how five of the six most famous assassins got rid of politicians, including national leaders. Even more assassins of politicians would be famous if only we in the West could pronounce the names, Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Ghandi, for example, The fact is that as a proportion of the total, far more famous politicians than writers, artists, scientists etc. are murdered. I WONDER WHY! Not nearly enough of them in my view!

Still, that's the way to go if I'm to gaurantee my place in history.

Speaking of which, anyone know He-Who Must-Be-Stabbed's itinerary?

They know how to party. Not

Two stories on the front page of the DT today. One was the major train bombing in Bombay with at least 163 dead and 460 injured. Not certain yet but it has been attributed to Islamic militants. It seems a pretty fair bet.

The other item is about a couple whose wedding at Alton Towers has been ruined because the the park has double booked them with a fun day for 20,000 Muslims. There wil be prayer areas, bans on alcohol, gaming and gambling. On the rides women will have to cover up and men and women will not be allowed to ride together. Apparently these last rules will apply to the couple and their geusts if they wish to use the rides.

Muslim fun day? FUN DAY? I don't believe that many adherents of this miserable rule-obsessed intolerant violent shit of a religion would know how to have fun if they tried.

Second hand bits

Caught a bit on the regional news yesterday morning while slurping my cornflakes about a bloke who is in the record books for the most number for transplants. Apparently he's had heart, liver, lung and kidneys done.

Never really fancied the idea of second hand body bits in general (although there's a few of Catherine- Zeta-Jones's or Kiera Knightley's parts they could graft onto me any time) but it's more the pot luck nature of the donors that bothers me.

I wouldn't want parts from a Sun reader or Big Brother fan or anyone who has ever voted New Labour apart from in 1997 or believes in Socialism or globalisation or who works in a tax office or a government ministry or is a terribly establishment Daily Express reading sort or believes in the monarchy or thinks we need more laws or a traffic warden or someone who hunts or kills animals (including slugs) or listens to Rap or mainstream pop music such as KYlie Minogue.

In short I don't want any rif raff parts, they have to be from intellectual anarcho-nationalist pro-wildlife classical/heavy rock/blues lovers. Equally I want my own bits to go to similarly suitable sorts. I'm not having xoggoth parts wandering around in some chav or lefty.

Is there a national register one can go on where you can enter preferences? If not, high time somebody started one.

At last, a real government incentive

I may have given the impression on previous occasions that I regard all laws, or at least any enacted by this government, as total shite. It is true that I find the equation (NL law = total shite) to be an excellent rule of thumb which covers virtually every eventuality.

However, as I am so fair minded, I am happy to acknowledge the occasional exception. I found one on Sunday when I was doing my PAYE and came across a tax bulletin item while looking for my payslips. Under the Gender Recognition Act 2004, if I have a sex change I can officially retire this year. I plan to retire from full time contracting when the missus retires next year anyway, but it would be very nice to stop having to pay NI and to get that miserable £55 or so a week back from the government as it would (almost) pay for my vodka.

Trouble is, I don't want to spend loads of money on a private operation or spend years trying to convince a psychologist that I actually like activities like wearing makeup, reading Womens Weekly or knitting. My Wurzel Gummidge inspired fashion sense does not exactly convey an impression of a repressed feminine side either.

Still, I have always been quite a dab hand at repairing kitchen appliances and plumbing so there may be a solution. Where did I put those garden shears?

And the magnifying glass.

Jabba hangs on

Not much to say about Prescot that others haven't said far better. And as I cannot blog in the week at the moment due to modem problems everyone will have said it first anyway. Have a look at the excellent Vented Spleen for example. Nice too to see that it is liberarian right blogs that are making the headway in exposing the uselessness of the fat slug, especially this guy Guido

The affair, (or several alledgedly) did make me wonder about articles I have seen recently that modern woman are no longer turned on by power and money but go for looks and personality. That can't be true surely? What else would anyone see in him other than that he is Deputy PM? Probably explains why he is so desperate to cling to office, if he lost it no sane women, apart from one with a strange lust for giant Cane Toads, would want anything to do with him.

Really?

As I have two limited companies not a week seems to go by without some crap from HM government dropping through my letter box.

Mostly it's routine crap from HMRC regarding VAT, PAYE, NI, tax codes or personal tax returns. Often it's non-routine crap about some revision in the aforesaid routine crap. Frequently, there is other government crap about changes to the crap government laws on running a business or employment. Recently we have had crap about checking eligibility to work in the UK or age discrimination for example. (Fortunately my businesses are already 100% compliant in the 'employment of old farts' law). Often I get crap from banks and other companies informing me of some crap change in the law, pension limits or money laundering rules for example.

Amid all the deluge of government crap, this Ex-Lax cascade of official paper through my letterbox, this one stood out due to the unusually bright and un-buffish envelope. Apparently, companies are now supposed to make a fire safety risk assessment of their premises and "enforcing authorities" will be visiting to make sure that they have. Fortunately, it does not apply to offices in private dwellings so this particular bit of crap could have gone straight into the bin along with most of the other official crap, but it was worth a quick read for the sheer entertainment value. It was purple and orange too! They clearly know my weeknesses.

As usual with government crap you have to wonder who exactly it is aimed at. It lists employers, people responsible for business premises, contractors controlling premises etc., all of whom, since they manage to do those things, one might expect to be of at least average intelligence and knowledge. I am sure they needed this (technically inaccurate) description.

Fire starts when heat (source of ignition) comes into contact with fuel (anything that burns), and oxygen (air).

I wonder if all these crap pointless civil servants who think up these crap laws adhere to those crap rules themselves in their office buildings. Probably, endless committees on enforcing crap rules are a better use of filling the spare time between thinking up crap rules than doing something useful.

In the checklist we have "Have you protected your premises again arson?". Clearly they did that years ago when they removed letter boxes from any government offices accessible to the general public. They aren't completely stupid you know. Pity, along with most of the population outside the public sector, I would dearly like to put something through their letter boxes as a small thank you for all the crap they put through mine.

PS

I feel I did not use the word crap enough in the above. One can never say crap enough when talking about government, politicians or civil servants. Unfortunately I thought too many craps would interfere with general readability. My original draft including words like governcrapment, envecraplopes and committcrapees was particularly difficult to follow. Here are all the spare craps I had to take out, please feel free to sprinkle them liberally throughout the above.

Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Prescott Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap BlairCrap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap BrownCrap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap taxmanCrap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap civil servants Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap Crap crap crap crap

Happy to admit our mistakes

Although it wasn't mine to be fair. I quoted the figures in the home office report.

That £2.5bn pa net "benefit" of immigration that works out at a princely £560 pa net contribution per head isn't correct as it turns out. I was looking for Frank Field's comments in the week and came across this analysis by somebody I have seen described elsewhere as a left-wing economist. There is a summary here.

Anyway, as I passed the incorrect figure on it is only fair I should pass on the correct figure. Due to a number of factors including the fact that the figures were derived during a surplus year, that the contribution counted corporation tax from foreign shareholders and did not include the £800m spent on immigration and citizenship, it should really have been a defecit of 0.4bn. That does not take into account less revenue from the native population as a result of lower wages which the professor seems to think, and he is the economist, is not insignificant.

What sort of costing for immigrants is it that does not include £800m spent specifically on immigration?? Why on earth would corporation tax from foreign shareholders be in there at all? We have to wonder what other convenient omissions and exaggerations, not to say total absurdities, there are in the study. Do the figures take any account of money being sent abroad that does not benefit our own economy?. Or the high percentage of foreigners in our jails or the extra £3000 average costs of educating children who cannot speak English? Is there anything in there for use of the existing infrastructure? Any big company that presented an average annual cost of its employees that took no account of depreciation of its capital assets would rightly be ridiculed by the financial commentators.

But whether the figure is £-0.4bn or £2.5bn or something like those, it is clear that the sum is pretty small compared to the £400bn* the government takes and spends each year and this is consistent with most serious studies around the world that the financial effects of immigration (either way to be fair) are negligible. Which just leaves us with all the other problems of overcrowding and cultural conflicts that we live with daily.

For what? For nothing at all.

*Or £260bn? seems to depend where you look, but what's the odd few hundred billion? It's LOTS compared to a bn or two anyway.

I want, er, a packet of Anadin please, oh, and er er, one of those, erm, that cough syrup and, er, um

When I was a mere 17 and probably looked more like 15 (youthful appearance is a xoggoth attribute) I remember walking up and down a tatty little street for about half an hour trying to summon up the courage to go into a tiny surgical appliance shop in West Croydon and ask for some condoms because my GF and I had decided to DO THE DEED. Well, to be honest, I had, she made her decision by proxy as it were. As with everything in life that one agonises about, it wasn't nearly as hard as I had imagined and the nice middle aged lady in her white coat was very matter of fact.

Come the hour and I was so absolutely terrified I had to make a short detour to the bog on the way to the bedroom to throw up and then was ABSOLUTELY INCAPABLE. Mind you, I made up for it on later occasions. These nervous lapses with new women have always been an occasional problem for us xoggoths, we are sensitive and artistic you know.

I see that there is soon to be an over the counter impotence gel. I assume this is not a remedy against nerves ahead of the occasion, rather it is aimed at more difficult physiological problems. Don't need it yet as the missus still turns us on but maybe, as we are now pushing 60, it won't be long until we do. And what male wants to admit to major problems in that area?

I can just see it now, walking up and down a tatty little street for about half an hour trying to summon up the courage.

More benefits of immigration

That pathetic £2.5bn pa net "benefit" of immigration, you know, the one that works out at a princely £560 pa net contribution per head in return for use of all our infrastructure and services, is shown up even more for the miserably low figure it really is by news on CUK that Eastern Europeans from Slovakia, Latvia and Lithuania are claiming tax credits for non existent childen under Brownstuff's ludicrously overcomplicated and incentive-destroying tax credit system.

The dossier claims that the system’s abuse by immigrants is costing £4billion – more than twice the amount HMRC paid out in tax credit overpayments through administrative and IT error.

The figure is not proven of course and may be over-inflated but whatever it may prove to be, what benefit to this country are migrants who need to claim benefit at all? When will this country wake up to the facts on immigration? Moderate numbers of provenly law-abiding, educated, healthy and highly skilled migrants with a committment to integrate and accept our country's values are an asset. But far too many we are getting under a totally undiscerning and lax system are dragging down our prosperity and quality of life and the ill-directed attempts to address the problems they cause in our society are destroying our freedoms.

The wrong end

News that He-Who-Must-Be-Stabbed has effectively "signed a blank cheque" to defeat the Taliban in Afhghanistan. How nice that he so graciously signs the blank cheque from our cheque books. The main concern seems to be Opium production. But is this the best way to tackle that and so many other problems we have with imported drugs and foreign crime generally?

No figures for so many things but I wonder how much it costs for the police to fight foreign crime or track down foreign terrorists or remove illegal immigrants once the offenders are hidden among their law abiding compatriots with all the practical and political difficulties that apprehension creates in those circumstances? What does it cost Uk citizens in terms of losses? How much does it cost to keep all those foreign prisoners? What is the cost to us of drugs once they are in the country?

ALL of these problems, not just heroine imports, could be addressed by effective border controls. Given that we are an Island with relatively few major ports and airports and that there isn't a yacht of significant size that is not picked up by the coastguard's radar, surely drug smuggling and so many other problems such as illegal immigration, people trafficking and organised crime by foreigh gangsters could be addressed much more effectively for less money by investing in proper control of our borders?

It is generally reckoned by industry that every employee costs about three times his own wages. Let's assume a customs man gets £30k pa, making his total cost £100k pa. Just the £1.7bn annual bill we were paying for asylum seekers alone a couple of years back could have paid for 17,000 new border guards.

Apart from more checks on entry and exit, there are so many other effective measures that could surely be applied more cheaply too without risking a single serviceman's life, including increased penalties, more stringent visa checks, reducing the many incentives to illegal immigration, more investment in detection equipment and tighter obligations on carriers.

We should also consider more publicity schemes of the sort that have done so much to reduce female drug mules from Jamiaca in recent years. (Not this shit government's initiative, we need not add). What is this government doing to tell women from Eastern Europe that those 'secretarial jobs' could be forced service in brothels? To tell Chinese migrants that they are mortgaging their families to trafficking gangs so that they can end up tramping the streets of Soho pleading for work washing dishes?

Passport to Pimlico

Similar principle anyhow. I was quite impressed by this novel solution in this discussion to the problem of illegal migrants claiming asylum or otherwise claiming rights on entering the UK

Surely there's a simple solution? If territory inside a country can be legally given over to another country (e.g. Canadian war cemetaries in France) we simply establish a small compound at Dover and other large freight ports, subdivided into sections, each technically the territory of a different origin country. Upon arriving from a country, the lorry is driven directly into this compound and searched, under the supervision of police officers. Any immigrants found are not on British soil, so cannot legally claim asylum. They are dispatched post haste back to the mainland of the country they have just come from, and told to apply to the British Embassy there in the proper manner. A small non-crippling procedural fine is imposed upon lorry drivers, which increases incrementally for those repeatedly found with asylum seekers aboard.
William Ramsden, UK

I do like lateral thinkers. The only slight problem I can see is that as these little encaves would be sovereign territory of other countries we could not actually force people to leave them. Still, as they would be surrounded by the UK I suppose we could starve them out and refuse passage into them. Until the first international human rights lawyer from United Nations Parasites Inc came along anyway.

Being like the rest of you

Since I am only a few months aways from being 60 I have had letters from the pension companies regarding retirement options. It seems I could get a much better deal if I was unfit, fat, unhealthy and had a few heart attacks or strokes under my belt.

This isn't fair!!! Why must I be such a magnificent specimen of humanity? Think an immensely posh and sophisticated version of Conan The Barbarian.

Anyway, I would be most grateful to you fat horrible unhealthy lot for any tips in sinking to your level before December.

Yeah!! we believe it don't we?

Muslim extremism is not remotely aided by Iraq, extremist Mullahs addressing impressionable young men NEVER EVEN MENTION IT do they?

And Prescott, who has promoted suped-casinos, stayed at the Ranch of the millionare owner of AEG who wants to turn the dome intom one but they have NEVER EVER EVER DISCUSSED THE ISSUE.

Bad enough that the ugly fat bastard costs us £2m for doing FEK ALL other than chair a few meetings.

His webshite costs £60k a year. Has anyone looked at it recently? Having been involved a bit in various land/planning issues last year, I know it used to be quite impressive. All sorts of issues concerning land, planning and property law were covered by the ODPM. I could almost believe the fat slug was doing something useful, if concreting England to cater for hordes of useless immigrants qualified that is. Now, despite the same URL, it's the Deparment For Commmunities And Local Government. Read it and try and figure what the fuck it actually does or why the webshite could possibly cost £60k pa.

Hot weather

I do like hot weather, it brings so much out. Mainly young women in scanty clothing. Mind, there are drawbacks. Saw a fat middle aged bloke today with no top and really low slung jeans, looked like a set of badly stitched barrage balloons.

That Poll

Confirms what many of us had already been saying. Anyone who thought that those Muslims at least tacitly supporting terrorism against civilian targets were just a tiny unrepresentative handful have been living in a politically correct dream world. Terrorism aside, anyone who thinks Islam is remotely compatible with a free and democratic society is still living there.

You can't turn back the clock and as far as British Muslims are concerned we have to try and integrate them more effectively into society but I hope the government will at least not continue previous mistakes. There should be an effective halt to any further migration from Islamic countries and total opposition to accession to the EU by Turkey. If there is any serious likelihood of that latter event we should take to the streets in massive numbers to avoid an unstoppable flood of this fifth column into our midst.

PS. AND STOP INVADING MUSLIM COUNTRIES FOR NO GOOD REASON WHATEVER BLAIR, YOU FECKING BASTARD!!. He-Who-Must-Be-Stabbed is quite correct to say there are many in Islam who do what they do because they hate our society. Let is not forget that 11/9 happened before any invasions and in the wake of some Western efforts, selfish motives and lack of effectiveness notwithstanding, to help Muslims in Kosovo, Kuwait and Somalia. But nobody with half a brain cell can seriously imagine that Iraq has not been effectively used in recruitment to extremist organisations.

PPS. Muslim terrorists! Redeem yourselves in our eyes and BLOW the twat to smithereens!!! Please!

Israel-BASTARDS. USA-BASTARDS

The Israelis are total and utter bastards, no doubt about it. But you have to admire one aspect, when an Israeli citizen is threatened there are no holds barred. If only our own government would defend its citizens in such a robust manner.

But our government simply does not give a flying fuck about its lesser citizens. We are all totally dispensable fodder in their grand designs. Nowhere is this illustrated more clearly than in the case of the Natwest 3. Equitable extradition treaties are one thing but in this case the treaty between the US and the UK has been ratified by us but not by them. This means that US citizens or residents who offend against our laws can only be brought to the UK if we can provide evidence which may be challenged in their courts. All they have to provide is a statement of a prosecutor's belief as to the facts.

It is all completely dishonest too. The treaty was supposed to be part of the (completely misdirected) "war on terror" but in fact most have been about white collar financial crimes. What is even more incredible is that extraditions have been applied for regarding things done in the UK which were not even crimes in the UK at the time!

This is simply un-be-bloody-lievable. The government should halt any further extraditions under the agreement until:

1. It is ratified by both sides
2. It is rewritten to ensure that the 'crime' was carried out in the country where the activity was actually criminal

Funny, I used to be so pro-American. Like most of us (there was a poll a while back but too lazy to find it) I have totally lost that sentiment. Since Bush, Iraq, Kyoto and the continuation of their wasteful lifestyle, their one sided support for Israel, finding out about the CIA inspired coup in Iran (50 years late, ok), the increasing emergence of the Christian right and the negative effect on personal freedoms and now this, I find I am starting to heartily dislike that country. Maybe, there at least, many of us will find a little common ground with Islam.

Those empty anti-racism speeches

Am I the only one to find all those little spiels about fighting racism before every World Cup match very irritating?

What exactly is the point? Certainly the football authorities should be taking firm action against any fans who are chanting racist slogans, but that requires proper policing, enforcement of the law and, in some countries, pressure by the sporting bodies to change or properly enforce the law. A stupid little speech does nothing, it's just pointless PC window dressing.

Also too, while most of us may not support racism in the corrrect sense, we are suspicious of the ridiculous way it is so often characterised. If we support anti-racism, are we obliged to go along with the absurd ideas that seem to define it today?

1. That every aspect of every third world culture is necessarily at least the equal of our own and worthy of respect.
2. That uneducated citizens from poor, violent and lawless societies are certain to be economically useful and law-abiding members of ours.
3. That, in the absence of specific information on individuals, we should never be guided by firmly based statistics about cultures. Any immigrant will immediately rise above the society he has left.
4. That white Caucasians, unlike everyone else, have no right to a nation or a culture of their own. They are entirely dispensable and must be infinitely accomodating.
5. That not a single asylum seeker or foreign benefit applicant could ever, ever, be so dishonest as to falsify a claim.
6. That major health epidemics, like AIDS or TB, which merited major government information campaigns when they were due to gays or rough sleepers, should never be mentioned now they are mostly spread by immigrants.
7. That any attack on black by white is a suspected racist attack. Any attack by black on white and the R word must never even be hinted at.
8. That crime by certain immigrants and minorities is a subject we may observe on our TVs on an almost nightly basis, but never comment on.
9. That figures like that "immigrants contribute 10% more in tax than they get in benefits" must be trotted out at every opportunity with no hint of what they mean. (It works out at £560 pa per head, not even enough to pay for use of medical care, roads and other services, let alone a pension.)

Forget the obsession with race, it's cultural differences that cause problems

Cultures make people. People make cultures. The perceived problems of some minorities are nothing to do with race in the proper sense of the word.

Not all that much to do with poverty and exclusion either, if that were true, the worst criminals would be Sikhs and Bangladeshis but those two groups are generally fairly well behaved. Look to the home culture. Nine times out of ten, crime and other problems in the uk and other Western countries are just a reflection of the same problems in the home country.

Those who recall the subjects of trade talks between the US and China since Clinton's time will be aware that copyright piracy is a major problem in the latter country. The Times yesterday reported that a "theatrical cinema investigator" has been appointed to tackle the growth in illicit recording to make pirate DVDs. It also reports that "illegal Chinese immigrants have exacerbated the problem in Britain"

Those who anticipate that minority problems are solely down to exlusion from white society will often be disappointed if they look at the facts with an open mind. Like this for example. They are my italics.

The relative underachievement of African-Caribbean boys in Britain is a feature of our schools that is a cause for concern... Group members were interested in gathering evidence of boys’ performance in Jamaican schools anticipating that it would be higher than for black British boys.
Ironically, there was an initial disappointment in terms of achieving the primary objective. Jamaican teachers have not yet come up with the solutions to the problem of boys’ underachievement! But they are working on these solutions.
Jamaican boys’ motivation and general achievement levels relative to those of girls are lower. The problems are recognised as being as serious in Jamaica as they are in the U.K. ...The absentee father was frequently mentioned as a contributing factor.

Note race in the proper sense has nothing to do with it. It has been reported that up to a certain age, black kids are at least as good as whites in school. I suppose one could argue they suddenly become inferior at 12 (the far right has had dafter theories) but as far as Afro-Carribeans are concerned it seems far more likely to be a problem of peer pressure in a defective culture. Glamorising guns and drugs, absentee fathers, the quick paths to wealth, the acceptance of the idea that they "won't get anywhere in a white society" before they have even tried, despite a number of good role models that show it is possible. About time some cultures faced up to their own problems; usually only they can solve them.

National Pride

While it is true that I am not very interested in football, or indeed any sport that does not provide serious views of women's scantily clad bottoms, nobody can say I am not patriotic. Nor can anyone say I am not always bang up to date.

While gardening this morning I have been showing I am fully in tune with the mood of the nation by proudly wearing my World cup tea shirt .

What?? What??

Vote Of Confidence

I see that Homebase are selling off their England football stuff at barely above half price. England flags that were £1.95 are now 99p. Lamps formerly at £7.99 are £4.99. Sensible decision probably. Come tomorrow evening and all that stuff is likely to be worthless.

Equal pay for 60% of the work

On the front page of The Times this week: "Wimbledon is sending a message to women across the world:you are inferior" Venus Williams. Here we go again, I thought, somebody wanting the same payment for three sets as men get for five.

I was wrong! In the article Venus makes it quite clear that, for the same pay, she expects women to play five sets just like the men. No argument at all in that case. Assuming, that is, that the women's matches do bring in similar money. For the final stages anyway I really can't see otherwise, considering that there are no spare seats at Centre Court for the lady's finals and it seems to be covered to the same boring extent on TV.

She says that the current total prize pot for men is £5,197,440. For women £4,446,490.So that means that, with the current 5 male to 3 female sets the women currently get 42% more per set than the men. According to this the prize money for the winners is £655,000 for men, £625,000 for ladies. A massive 60% more per set than the men. One does wonder why they are complaining. Wish someone would offer to pay me almost the same for a three day week that I currently get for five.

Still, play the five sets and equal pay, or at least the same % of the money the matches generate, is ok with me. We are very pro-equality for women here on bloggoth. Very women's lib. It is quite unacceptable that women should be treated as 2nd class citizens in any way. We also totally deplore the attitudes of our male dominated society that sees women as sex objects and wish to publicly disassociate ourselves from such unfortunate and completely deplorable masculine attitudes.

PS. Venus. You haven't got nearly such a nice arse as your sister. She deserves a lot more prize money.

PPS. Oh god no! He-Who-Must-Be-Stabbed has jumped on the bandwagon. Trips to the World Cup for kids who were sold phoney tickets last week, support for equal pay at Wimbledon this week. Is there any bandwagon the arse doesn't jump on? So what if his bloody awful judgement has got 400,00 Iraquis killed to no purpose whatever?, just as long as he gets his bloody comment in on whatever happens to be the news story today! Sorry Venus. I found your article very convincing, but if HWMBS agrees with it it must be a totally crap idea. I hope they pay you with a packet of wine gums.

Worse than blithering

I admit I have not been terribly nice about the blithering Cameron, not a patch on the the leader we should have had, David Davis.

Still, I have to admit it could have been a lot worse. We could have ended up with that 'safe pair of hands', that fat hush-puppied avuncular Euro-freak Ken Clarke. The man does not have a democratic bone in his body. He first proved that as education secretary when he pushed through measures without an ounce of consultation. It never seems to matter one jot to him that the great majority of the population have major reservations about the greater European integration he continually espouses.

This week Cameron (I am dropping the blithering for a trial period) has suggested having a Bill of Rights. I await the details but if it gives us the same protection from the state as the European law while also re-introducing the natural connection between rights on the one hand and duties and obligations on the other, it sounds ok to me. Maybe it will be unworkable as lord Tebbit says unless we withdraw from the European act, but the principle sounds good.

Naturally the appalling Clarke has labelled them anti-foreigner. I doubt Cameron is a major xenophobe, but perhaps, if the proposed act has a national dimension, he just sees the links between rights and duties more clearly. There may be a case to be made in charity for looking after other nationals in certain circumstances. But let us not call it a right because there can be no right in absence of that essential, usually unwritten, contract that must always exist between the giver and the receiver. Perhaps we should be more charitable, but there is never, ever, a case to be made for mandatory donation to supplicants purely on demand and without proper regards to their deserts.

"Stand up to the tabloids" says Clarke. But he knows as well as we do that papers do not lead the electorate, they print what they think the electorate wants to read. They do not glow, they reflect. What Clarke is really saying, so typically of the man, is "Stand up to the wishes of the electorate"

I just happened to come across this on the net.

Is it meant as a joke? I don't think so. Is it just some guy hoping to make a fast buck by exploiting the cynicism with which many of us view a healthy lifestyle lobby that seems to change its mind about what is good for us every year? Possibly.

I am sceptical of some of it, but some is bang on. He is totally right about the idiocy of drinking loads of water for example, that isn't science, that's just stupid new agey health freaky crap. The body just needs sufficient water after other losses to remove waste products from the kidneys. That's around 600cc a day, not 3 litres.

I am willing to bet that some other claims of this guy are far from hot air. He is perfectly correct to point out that where there are big profits to be made, the real truth about health hazards may never see the light of day.

Remember that study earlier this year that said that, contrary to established 'wisdom', consuming oily fish had no proven benefits? Was I the only one to notice that the claims for the benefits of such supplements were pushed even more, as though the study had never been published? I swear that that advert with the sleepy kid who goes to pour out some cereal and a pile of fish slide out was on almost constantly after the study.

Make up you own mind. I'm off to sink a tub of lard dissolved in a large vodka.

xoggoth is parked

What a performance transferring a .org domain! It would have been simpler if it was .org.uk, but it would be entirely unfitting for an internationally renowned site not to have international status. Universal would have been even more fitting but there don't seem to be any .uni sites as yet.

Sign up to new hosters and initiate transfer, sign up to free (that requires a credit card) account at registar, fax current holder with details and reason for transfer (bunch of nuns). Initiate transfer on at registrar. Do something else to accept at new hoster's site. (I think, I have lost track). Get email from current hosters with details of new registar, log onto that and accept transfer, go to new hosters and set a lot of things to point new site at domain and set DSN things. FINALLY wait 24 hours plus and here we are.

xoggoth is now parked at a new layby. We propose to start thieving from neigbouring sites and strewing bits from virtual old dismantled cars all over the cyber verge with immediate effect.

The DVLA shows the way forward for public services

This item of real news just cannot go uncommented on by a sleezy old state-loathing anarchist like myself.

14 have been sacked from the DVLA for emailing porn outside the organisation. Another 101 have been disciplined for emailing porn within it.

Quite right they were disciplined for spending time on that when they should have been working and for degrading performance of the organisation's systems. That isn't in the BBC article but, according to the Times, there was so much porn passing around that the network was signicantly slowed, probably because the emails were stopping off for a quick wank in the servers. But naturally, in our prudish society, they were disciplined for passing innapropriate material. The 14 were sacked for bringing the organisation into disrepute by sending such material outside.

Are they kidding?? If the DVLA sent me some decent porn pics with their boring reminders about road tax, my opinion of them would go up immensely and I would even be a bit more willing to pay for such road tax. Same with all the government departments.

Look HMRC! read this and learn from it. When you send out your annual employer's pack with its extremely boring CD, liven it up with a 5 minute clip from "Sandra Takes A Cumbath". Most of us small business owners, the majority of us male, will be far more positive towards you and more willing to comply with all your ridiculous procedures in the wake of a quick J Arthur. We may also be much more willing to pay the tax as we will feel that we are getting something, albeit small, in return. It would certainly be a change to actually get anything from the state in return for the tax we pay.

Maybe too, when you send us those stringy middle-aged female compliance officers, we could have a quick flash in return for cooperation. "Oh ok, yes, I admit I did pass a couple of invoices through my personal account and fail to include them in the accounts. Any chance of a look at your arse, Mrs Weatherspoon?"

The blithering mathematical illogicalities that guide our society

A very small article in The Times illustrates the nonsensical calculations that are so often used to justify this or that measure. Not because they are wrong but because taken in isolation they mean absolutely nothing. According to economists, a child born as a result of IVF pays far more in tax than the average cost to the NHS of providing the treatment, so therefore, QED, "Investing in fertility treatment has big economic benefits!".

Now, I am not getting at people who need the treatment; if they have paid their taxes and NI, it may be fair enough they should get the treatment on the NHS, infertility is a health problem like any other. It is this ridiculous economic "justification" that pisses me off!

For a start, these children have paid back the cost of treatment, apparently £12,931, by the time they have reached 31. Jeez! In the workplace about 13 years and they've paid less than £13k tax?? Does IVF treatment produce total deadbeats or is that figure a mistake? But even assuming that is an error (we are told in the next sentence that they pay £147k over a working lifetime) what the hell does it mean unless compared to the national average?.

Anyone who manages to support themselves and pay a small amount of net tax, even if it's three and sixpence halfpenny over a lifetime, is "contributing to the wealth of the nation", but the plain fact is that unless what they contribute to the national wealth is at least equal to the average, they can only reduce the per capita average living standards of the nation.

Nowhere is this nonsense applied more than to the subject of unskilled migrants. Here we are told, and a lot of the politically correct will parrot a similar figure, that low skill immigration is not an economic problem because, according to Treasury figures, the immigrant population of Britain contributes more in tax (£31.2 billion) than it receives in benefits (£28.8 billion). A net tax take of £2.4bn hardly sounds a lot considering we were spending 1.7bn pa on asylum seekers alone just a few years back. But what is it per head? According to the 2001 UK census there were 4,301,280 immigrants in the uk, where immigrant is defined in accordance with UN definitions.

Divide net tax by people and what do we get? Less than £560 pa. Wow! I pay about three times that in council tax alone!

That £560 is an average for all immigrants for course, including the highly skilled, useful and wealthy whose presence here really is an asset. The "benefit" of the unskilled is even lower. (And does 'benefits' even include health care and the like?) That sort of marginal net benefit does not begin to take account of the destruction of our countryside by the extra population, let alone all the problems we see on a daily basis which have not even been factored into the equation or the fact that their wages, since so much is sent out of the UK, do not have the same positive impact on the economy as the wages of indiginous low paid Britains which are more likely to be spent in the UK on UK services and goods.

Anyone who seriously imagines that our average standard of living and our quality of life is not being dragged down here is living in a politically correct fantasy world.

Have a look at this speech from Hansard by Conservative MP Peter Lilley

...the definitive work on the subject, published last December in the Population and Development Review, by Coleman and Rowthorn, entitled "The Economic Effects of Immigration into the United Kingdom". Their conclusion was:

"We conclude that the economic consequences of large-scale immigration are mostly trivial, negative or transient; that the interests of the more vulnerable sections of the domestic population may well be damaged; and that any small fiscal or other economic benefits are unlikely to bear comparison with immigration's substantial and permanent demographic and environmental impact. We demonstrate that such findings are in line with those from other developed countries".

You will also note that just below, Mrs. Louise Ellman (Labour, naturally), without having looked at the report, feels obliged to challenge this statement with a question:

Has the right hon. Gentleman compared the substance of the report from which he is quoting with the report published by the Home Office in 2002, which indicated that migrants contributed 10 per cent. more to this society than they actually cost it?

See what I mean about parrotting figures with no thought to context? That 10% (actually it's only just over 8% but we'll let that pass) is those Treasury figures again that show a net tax contribution of £2.4bn for every £28.8bn in benefits, that 10% net contribution that works out at a princely sum of under £560 pa per head!

Oh yes. The pensions fallacy.

If anyone actually read this blog they might be saying, hang on! That is short term thinking! If some are not a great economic asset now, that is only because they are mostly young and producing the children we need to pay for future pensions.

Ah yes! The other great fallacy.

Since science has not yet identified any limit to the increase in longevity, a continual increase in population is a bit like building more roads to accomodate more traffic; it is nothing more than a temporary stopgap and not a sustainable solution. Immigrants get old and sick too, and if they get better off they stop producing so many children (birth rates among the very successful Indian community are lower than UK average) so we have to import more to look after the previous ones who were supposedly our salvation. It makes no sense, sooner or later we have to look at better solutions.

Remembering that I am only challenging unskilled immigration, not that of the provenly able, how many other people's pensions do you seriously think a platform cleaner, say, is going to be paying for in addition to his own? If that £560 pa is typical it won't even pay for his own. True, some may better themselves and a very very few will become wealthy, but most of the unskilled will remain in the same or similar jobs. Those migrants who have done very well, from Uganda or India for example, usually brought their business or other skills with them.

The situation is not helped by the low social mobility in the UK which means that, even if they have ability, poor unskilled young people are likely to become poor unskilled old people. Worse, the children and grandchildren of poor unskilled people are likely to be poor and unskilled and worse still, although this a failing of our society in general and applies to whites from former industrial areas too, those from Ethnic backgrounds are more likely to see it all as a result of exclusion with all the social problems that that implies.

We have had significant levels of immigration since the fifties. Check the unemployment/benefit figures for British minorities. Since the benefit uptake is way above average, it is perhaps reasonable to ask when exactly this paying for all our pensions is supposed to start happening.

The miraculous powers of obscenity

Think I might have mentioned this before but about three years back I had been getting a lot of really bad abdominal pains over a couple of months. Once on travelling back from contract site it was so bad I had to stop the van at the side of the road.

I was seriously thinking I might have appendicitis or something and wondering if I should try and find a hospital. Agonising. I was sitting there scrunched up and swearing. For no particular reason I just did a Father Jack and shouted "Drink! Arse! Fek! Girls!" and the pain instantly went. Can't quite remember if the problem disappeared entirely after that, but it was not significant. I told no 1 son, and he tried it when he had indigestion, and he reckons it works! If that isn't a miracle, the ultimate proof of suitability for Sainthood for Father Jack Criley, I do not know what is.

I wrote to the Vatican but never got a reply.

The only reason I have thought of it after all this time is that I have found another source of therapeutic obscenity. A couple of weeks back the missus brought me a CD of Nina Simone's Greatest Hits. It has that song from Hair, "Got my hands , got my etc." Getting up miserable in the morning at the thought of a long day at work, I have found it a great relaxer. I sing that song, but instead of whatever Nina's got, I sing "Got my C*, got my c*, got my c*" where the C word is spelt with a hard K and sung like she sings it. By the time I have finished dressing I feel a lot more positive. Ok, it's not a miracle, wrong religion maybe, but feel it is perhaps one of the paths to serenity that the Buddha would have taught.

I have written to the Dalai Lama but so far have not had a reply.

Clever Trevor

Being a right wingy sort I know I am supposed to vibrating with rage at Trevor Phillip's call for positive discrimination to counter the very low number of Muslims in the Police. Sorry, but the idea makes some sense.

This has nothing to do with political correctness as I loathe Islam and believe it should never have been inflicted on our society. But the reason I so dislike the religion is because of the Islamic view that irrational rules should shape our society and it follows from that that I want a rational and workable solution to the tensions we have. Just complaining about past immigration policies is as barmy as seeking inspiration from the Prophet.

The idea that equality necessarily means identical treatment is simplistic because the impact of exclusion depends on power and numbers. A black man excluded from white society is excluded from almost everything of importance. A white man excluded from black society is excluded from nothing that really matters. In a very few areas, in justice and in political representation, trying to obtain some sort of proportionality may help to draw minorities out of isolation.

In purely practical terms maybe the police could use the expertise to avoid so many mistakes. In any job, experience and knowledge of the people you are dealing with is usually considered an asset. Why do we so reject the idea that those with a real inside knowledge of minority cultures could be an asset in policing areas where they live? Taking on the second rate merely because of their colour or religion would do nobody any favours and neither do we need the agitators or the professional victims but there must be suitable candidates.

Some six months back Trevor Phillips warned that we were sleep walking into a ghetto society and he was right, but as far as I can see, he was largely ignored. He was also right back in 2002 when he warned that the AIDS explosion due to African immigrants was too important to be hushed up for fear of stirring up predudice . He was ignored then too and the complacency has gone on. Now this 1% of the population that accounts for 25% of all HIV infections is causing most new cases in the UK. It seems that political correctness counts for far more than the health of our population.

Trevor Phillips is perhaps the only head of the CRE so far that makes one (almost) think it is worthwhile organisation. A pity his sensible council always seems to be ignored by those with the real power.

Rational it ain't

Look at mainstream Islamic websites and you will soon find the claim that it is a very rational religion.

Take the well known prohibition on eating pork for example. The reasons given for the prohibition are a) Pork carries many dangerous diseases and parasites which are not easily removed by cooking. b) Pigs are unfussy feeders and will eat anything such as carrion or excrement.

Good reasons and the prohibition certainly sounds very rational. Except of course that it isn't. There is a world of difference between a religious prohibition backed up by threats of exclusion from paradise and the pragmatic application of rules to protect health. In the latter case, if the problems are addressed, the rules need no longer be applied. In the first case they do.

If effective treatment of the disease and parasites could be found and the animals were certified to have been reared in an entirely healthy manner, Muslims could still not eat them. If the government spent a billion pounds on every pig, if every piece of pork was tested and scanned with a microscope to ensure there were no live germs or parasites, if it was irradiated just to make sure, if every pig was fed by hand and supervised day and night to ensure that not a morsel of shit passed its lips, if DVDs covering every second of each pig's life were available to prove it, Muslims would still not eat them.

Sorry Muslims, but what you have there does not begin to be rationality, it is superstition with the outward appearance of rationality.

A disturbing development

I see from a Times report that the first full face transplant is to be performed in the UK. Must be great news for those seriously disfigured to have a hope of normality.

But as with everything there is a downside and I am worried. What if this becomes an established and safe procedure and wealthy people who are not disfigured but merely plain start wanting transplants for cosmetic reasons? What if there are not enough handsome male corpse faces to go round?

There is a clear danger for incredibly good looking people like myself that we might find ourselves kidnapped and wake up in an ice filled bath without faces. My god!!!! What if they start doing brain transplants?? I will be the target of every criminal gang in Europe, my massive intellect could fetch millions from the right buyers!!!

The god-like beauty of xoggoth caught
as he relaxes in the magnificent gardens
of xoggoth towers today.

PS

According to this site the stories of people waking up in hotel baths with no kidneys is a baseless urban legend.. I REALLY HATE these smug people who expose urban legends, always keen to point out prosaic realities! Is there to be no mystery or romance allowed in modern life?

Anyway, it just isn't true. I personally know several people who have had organs stolen. Just a couple of months back, our local scout leader got out of his Range Rover and fell flat on his face! His legs had been stolen by a Romanian gang while he was stuck in traffic in Kensington. One posed as a windscreen washer and started an argument about the tip and while he was thus distracted the others sawed his legs off.

Visited EYE-RAK? Who?

Bush visited EYE-RAK this week and hardly anyone gave a shite.

There was low key coverage in most papers. At right is the Telegraph's front page coverage, tucked away down at the bottom next to the Matt cartoon. Just a reference to a short item on page 14.

Isn't there a germ of a weapon here? Like most people of massive intellect I have always been rather contemptuous of papers like the Sun or Star where there is so little serious coverage and whose front pages are full of crap about Big Brother or some soap star's lovers. I was totally wrong. This is just the sort of stuff all papers should be reporting. Same with the TV news - forget all the politics, give us stories about an old lady rescued from a toilet by a pet Labrador, a football star seen at a brothel in Doncaster, ageing comedians making a comeback in Corrie.

Wouldn't the politicians just hate it if all their ridiculous initiatives were virtually ignored by the press? What would He-Who-Must-Be-Stabbed do, the man whose monstrous ego bears the same relation to his judgement as the inside of the Tardis bears to a 1960s police box, if he could not get his almost daily exposure on our TV screens? If the only place he could parade his phony toughness and sincerity and all those damn teeth on the box would be the odd short slot on Jonathan Ross, and then only as a last minute fill in if some chap who used to play the guitar with Herman's Hermits couldn't make it.

I reckon the bastard would IMPLODE!

Defend the whales

I see those bastard Japs have only just been foiled in their plans to try and bring back commercial whaling. Beats me how any nation can be such total Philistines as to want to wipe out these magnificent animals just to make a few burgers. Dunno though, having seen their TV programs...

I trust that our government will use whatever means have been found effective in the past to foil Japanese intentions.

Lorry drivers

Written a few bits of blog bollox this week (below) but have had a lot of problems with my GPRS modem.

Too knackered to write much anyway. The time spend travelling does not help. Like many contractors I spend hours traveling to/from home at weekends in addition to a normal daily commute. It would be about seven hours in total if not for those FRIGGING BASTARDS driving lorries. Every hold up, there's a lorry causing it.

Today was typical, I was just ten minutes out of Somewhere In England Town before hitting a 40 minute queque caused by a broken down lorry. The bastard could have broken down about a mile further back on the dual carriageway, he could have broken down at several other points and pulled off on a layby, but no, the bastard breaks down on the very narrowest bit of single carriageway at the brow of the hill.

After last week I avoided the worst part of the M25 and only got on it at the bit where it's usually ok and soon hit the back of a 15 mile jam caused by a lorry fire. Over 5 hours for a 135 mile journey. Last week it took over seven and a half because an overturned lorry had closed the M25 in both directions. The driver was not seriously injured apparently.

PITY! Look, you fecking lorry frivers, if you are going to waste hours of my precious weekend by flinging your vehicles all over the motorways, the least you can do is BREAK YOUR FECKING NECKS!

I don't beeeeelieve it - 1

Sad news yesterday that one of our chaps had been killed in Afghanistan during the escalating resistance from The Taliban. A comment by "officials" - "We never expected it to be this difficult".

Oh really? Despite the fact that the Afghans inflicted humiliation after humiliation on the Russians who never seemed quite so handicapped by our squeamishness at conducting a proper war, AKA kill the enemy and sod the civilians, the sort that actually had a chance of working? What were they at the time exactly, some minor power? One operating, like the British in the Falklands, at the geographical limits of their capacity?. Not as though major powers ever have the slightest chance of losing wars if operating in foreign countries is it? Apart from Korea or Vietnam perhaps.

If you had asked any "man in the street", armed with that expertise we all have from having watched "Carry on up the Khyber", he would have told you that Afghanistan was likely to be a major challenge. The same "man on the Clapham omnibus" might well have said that Iraq would go exactly the way it is going, towards civil war. Hell! this "Average Joe" suggested the possibility on CUK in the second week of the war. Omniscient? Lucky geuss? No! I just know a bloke who had worked there for some time and knew about the Shia-Sunni tensions and the major role they played in the Iran-Iraq war and I was interested enough to spend perhaps twenty minutes reading about it.

It seems to me the ignorance of us average slobs, those of us who rely on half remembered news, hazily recollected history, drunken recollections of mates who spent a few months there and a quick perusal of a few articles does not begin to compare to the ignorance of those in charge of these policies who have been given all the background knowledge, have the advice of experts on tap and been supplied with umpteen pages of detailed analysis whose minds have been totally sealed by their own monstrous egos.

I don't beeeeelieve it - 2

Well there was something I was really incensed about but I have totally forgotten what it was. It will come to me. The burning issue of the day, I assure you.

TV

TV is like some monstrous desert. What the hell does anyone find worth watching on it? One big exception at the moment of course.

No, not the fecking football! I mean Bill Oddie's Spring Watch. Lots of pictures of little birds and otters and stuff.

The football is all the same. Caught something in the Italy vs some wog country match tonight and I am sure the bloke I saw doing that throw in thing they do was the same chap I have seen doing throw in things in bits of other matches I have caught. (Wife and #1 son are avid followers unfortunately, so it is difficult to escape entirely). Maybe I am the only one sufficiently disinterested to have noticed that there isn't really a world cup at all, it's just the same few extras running round and round a field pretending to be teams from different countries.

Ming

Actually Ming The Mummy don't sound half bad. Given a blithering Tory leader who seems to think a big state, high taxation and massive immigration are not problems, and therefore, as far as I am concerned, a total waste of a vote, it's refreshing to hear somebody at least call for lower taxes, less regulation and less legislation.

I used to be a Liberal supporter once, they seemed to have a grasp of democracy and individual freedom that the other parties did not. Yeh, the Tories believed in economic freedom, for the rich anyway, but hated social freedom. Labour pushed the opium of social freedom, shag who you like, to take people's minds off the lack of economic freedom. Individual freedom should apply to all areas of life in my mind.

David Steele was the best PM we never had, one of the few British policians ever to impress me. Then along came sanctimonius Captain Pantsdown, a CAPTAIN you know, and therefore an expert on everything to do with Western defence. Then we had the Ginger Knob. Always thought he seemed a nice enough chap but he totally forgot his duties as an opposition leader and spent his time in the house attacking the Tories. One Labour party is at least one too many, thanks Knob.

Shame that the Libs led by Ming The Mummy won't make any headway. Age IS a factor these days although you can be sure that bloggoth would not dream of ridiculing somebody simply because of his age.

What a guy!!!!!!

I have been toying with the idea of a short story based on Vlad Tepes, AKA Vlad the Impaler, probable inspiration for Stoker's Count Dracula. He is best known for his cruelty, especially his favourite party trick of impaling Turks or German merchants on long steaks that went into their anuses and emerged through their mouths.

As usual I have embarked on my usual extensive background research, idly flipping through a couple of googled items, and came across this:

The Burning of the Sick and Poor

Vlad Dracula was very concerned that all his subjects work and contribute to the common welfare. He once noticed that the poor, vagrants, beggars and cripples had become very numerous in his land. Consequently, he issued an invitation to all the poor and sick in Wallachia to come to Tirgoviste for a great feast, claiming that no one should go hungry in his land. As the poor and crippled arrived in the city they were ushered into a great hall where a fabulous feast was prepared for them. The guests ate and drank late into the night. Vlad himself then made an appearance and asked them, "What else do you desire? Do you want to be without cares, lacking nothing in this world?" When they responded positively Vlad ordered the hall boarded up and set on fire. None escaped the flames. Vlad explained his action to the boyars by claiming that he did this "in order that they represent no further burden to other men, and that no one will be poor in my realm."

There you are drivelling Cameron!That's the sort of Tory leader we wanted!

I am sure it was here somewhere

I see the Gobswoman Of Human Rights has been told she cannot work in the Malaysian courts. The official reason is that she has no particular expertise in commercial law and that Malaysia has plenty of competent lawyers of its own.

I think it is more likely they are afraid she might belch and swallow the Petronas Towers.

CORRUPTION BY ANY OTHER NAME

The role of speaker in the House of Lords is up for grabs. This is a £101,000 a year role which comes with an apartment, £37k expenses and a £10,000 gold and silk robe. At least one of the candidates is honest by declaring he would do as little as possible in the house of Lords apart from sitting on the woolsack.

Given the emasculation of the Lords by He-Who-Must-Be-Stabbed, it isn't as though this highly paid lolling about doing nothing has any purpose anyway. Despite the pledges when first elected, HWMBS has not managed to reform the lords, mainly because others had a little more grasp of democracy and did not fancy a mostly Blair appointed upper house. Given that they are appointed by the government and not allowed to alter any legislation anyway, is there any point in having people in the Lords anyhow? Why not appoint hamsters? Some bran, nuts, lettuce, sliced carrots, much cheaper.

Or how about taking a leaf out of the old Peter O'Toole film, "The Ruling Class"? When government ministers are pushed out, shoot them and prop their bodies up in the Lords. It must be a great honour to serve your country from beyond the grave. Well, without a grave to be accurate. Blair would be a great choice as speaker. It would be worth 101k a year just to tune in to the parliamentary channel occasionally and watch him decomposing on the woolsack.

Public Service

Good of the blithering Cameron to come out in favour of the public sector.

A little while ago we had the news from the CBI that public sector workers take 8.5 days off sick a year compared to 6 for private sector workers. Naturally, we are very fair minded at bloggoth, so, in the interests of balance, here is the TUC's response. I notice they do not actually dispute the figures, just prefer for some reason that escapes me to point out that the figures for absences of less than 5 days tell a different story. And that, since almost all public sector workers are frontline fireman or policemen or nurses while private sector workers never do anything stressful or dangerous it is reasonable anyway.

Ah yes, and in the public sector workers take longer off sick because they get a "fairer deal when they are injured while too many private sector staff will be quietly got rid of". Precisely the point. Let me give you an example of the "fairer deal" that teachers get. Off sick? Never mind, full pay for six months, half for another six. If towards the end of that time a doctor says you are fit to teach, by all means come back, they can't stop you. Don't overdo it, just do a few hours a week to start with is ok, it's enough to get you back on full pay. If possible, arrange to come back just before the long summer break, as you then now enjoy that on full pay. Two days into the new term have a relapse and the whole process starts again! Theoretical? No. It's happened much like that at my wife's school twice now and the school budget, and hence the children, have suffered from it.

THE REST OF THE NATION CAN'T AFFORD "fairer deals" like that!

Coincidentally, the latest figures for the Office For National Statistics have just been released and for the first time they have been broken down by sector. The public sector accounts for 20% of the UK's workforce and 72% of the days lost due to strikes. The Time's graph below for previous years is even more striking than the civil service unions. I wonder what the TUC's response to that will be?

Illegal

The Times reports a revision of penalties for sexual offences including tougher penalties for rape. About time.

It also mentions starting points for sex with a corpse or an animal. Nothing about corpse OF an animal unfortunately. Which reminds me, I hope to be able to put my cheapskate's guide to sex aids back soon, with invaluable guidance on erotic uses of road kill.

Interesting list of wierd sex laws here. Apparently in Lebanon it is legal to have sex with an animal, but only a female one. I should think so too. Not sure I believe that thing about the penalty for masturbation in Indonesia being decapitation. On my first day in Indonesia my driver proudly showed me his collection of porn in the glove compartment. It must be like laws on witchcraft here, a law not usually used, otherwise the country would surely have been empty.

Aaaaaaaah! summer!

Hot weekend. What else matters? Fek! I hate weekdays! Even though the contract is technically quite interesting and I get to do things as I want, even though the people in the new office are much friendlier, I don't wanna be there!! I wanna be 'unemployed' again. AKA back doing my own business, that full time hard work that brought in a few k a year. Ah but what work some of it was! wandering the still glorious countryside photographing scenes to use as backgrounds, drawing cartoon bugs.

Richard Attenborough wandered all over the world reporting on lions and chimps, Bill Oddy wanders about the moors reporting on weasels and Moorhens. Time to move on and follow the trend, more local, smaller.

I have written to the BBC with some outlines for my new program. Forget "Lions Of The Serengeti", "Big Cat Watch" and all that crap that means nothing to the average nature enthusiast in Battersea.

What everyone wants to watch these days is xoggoth presenting "Woodlice Behind The Shed".

Thought of going back to work's got me into a real depression. If the rest of today's posting seems vicious, remember it is a symptom. Isn't this the accepted thing? Nothing is ever our fault? If I had a shotgun there would be real nasty. Naturally that wouldn't be my fault either. I am a victim.

Too many people

Missus and I went to one of our favourite local places today, Wakehurst Place. Georgeous. Because there are so many trees there are places near here where you can see no sign of the habitation that you know is there. But it's only an illusion and I'm not sure how much longer it can last. The only thing that spoils the beautiful South East. Too many bloody people and more and more all the time.

Even if an ever expanding population would really bring us more prosperity, which it won't, I don't want to live in a Hong Kong style hell hole. Look, you Northern bastards, try creating some dynamism in your own damn regions! Look, you lot from crappy third world countries, try evolving your own prosperity over centuries as we had to do and don't shortcut the process at our expense.! Nasty? Sure! I am sick to death of being expected to put up in silence with the ruination of my home.

The people eraser

Missus took this picture. No idea why but she likes formal garden bits and it did look a lot nicer in real life, in the sunshine. Why does it look so dark and ghastly? Depression seems to have got into the camera too. Or maybe it doesn't like people either. I said to wait until the old fools were out of the way but they were walking too slowly and she was too impatient.

In my local town there is a small row of Elizabethan houses on the high street that, if you could see them properly, could let you imagine you were back in Shakespeare's day. Fat chance of seeing them properly with all the four by fours parked outside. One of my educational CDs that has not (yet) seen the market was one on Shakespeare. I spent a lot of my time in Paint Shop Pro trying to remove the trappings of our overcrowded and deteriorating civilisation with varying degrees of success, copying a bit of upper window from another house to hide somebody's shitty Range Rover, cloning stonework to remove people in Manchester United teashirts, smudging shadows to hide signs for the gift shop.

Oh for a Paint Shop Pro clone tool in real life! Just to be able to look at a picturesque scene and suddenly all those wrinkly old people, those doddery old wheel chair sorts, all those fat ugly people, their stupid dogs and their ugly whiny children could suddenly be erased and replaced by natural beauty. Oh for one of stupendous size to remove the whole of poxy ugly mankind from the planet.

The Peoples' Republic Of Tyneside And Humberside

Those who think us righties exaggerate the extent of the public sector should look at the figures from the Centre For Economic And Business Research summarised in this article. The same dependence on state funding in some British regions is shown in this article on business startups.

The regional breakdown shows that the North-East now relies for 61.5 per cent of its economic output on the public sector.

The figures are in sharp contrast to the South-East, where private enterprise is the main generator of income.
Business leaders said the figures for the North-East renewed worries that the public sector was "crowding out" the wealth-creating private sector.

Sir Digby Jones, the director general of the Confederation of British Industry, said: "I'm very worried about this. The private sector is responsible for around 62 per cent of GDP in China - a communist, totalitarian regime."

Plenty of public sector jobs are necessary and if you look on the net for public sector administrative jobs you will find the majority look worthy enough, pretty much the same sorts of jobs that you will find in the private sector. The ads for ludicrous jobs like "equality outreach manager" at £50k of the sort that papers like The Mail seize on, the ads you can read ten times without having the vaguest idea what the post actually entails, are not typical.

That does not alter the fact that in the private sector such jobs are subject to the only sort of value monitoring that really counts, the commercial consideration as to whether a company can afford the measurable benefit the post actually brings to it. Unlike the public sector where value is a qualitative decision and the money can always be found by another hike in rates, eleven years above inflation in a row now, or a few more stealth taxes that will very soon take our tax burden above Germany's.

It does not alter the fact that with a healthier private sector and less dependence on the public purse many of those apparently very worthy jobs, managing huge housing associations for example, would not even be necessary.

Every hike in rates or taxes destroys a little more of the only sector, the private one, that creates real wealth by producing goods and earning foreign currency

PS

Is this related to an article on Shout99 about take up of small business releifs?

Regions take up figures are:

North West with 26 per cent of eligible businesses taking up relief
London 34 per cent
South East 43 per cent
Midlands 48 per cent
South West 48 per cent
East with 57 per cent
North East 79 per cent

They really are first in the queque to stick their snouts in the public trough up there aren't they? After Prescott et al, anyhow. Hang on, where's Prescott's constituency? Oh yes, Hull East. Is there a pattern here?

Celebrity flat chefs

Mentioned before that the missus loves these cooking programs, Saturday kitchen, Ready Steady Cook, some poxy thing whose name I forget with lots of cooks competing to cook for the queen. Can't stand em.

With the exception of Anthony Warrel whatsit and that camp thicker fairy black bloke (who looks like the villain in that voodoo James Bond film, you know the one on the front of the train) both of whom are acceptably silly, the chefs are ghastly too.

There's an old bloke called Rick who always does sea stuff. Wanders along the seashore, picks up something and serves it with a bit of salad. Raw condom on a bed of rocket anyone? No ta, I prefer mine well done. There's Gary Rhodes who resembles Sonic The Hedgehog and some Chinese bloke.

No 1 son had a good idea for a cooking program. A variation on Ready Steady Cook where the celebrity chefs get chucked out of a plane with a selection of equipment and ingredients and they are not allowed to open their parachutes until the meal is finished.

The mega irritating Jamie Oliver and that repulsive wrinkled foul-mouthed Gordon Ramsey would be great choices for the pilot show.

We are moral enforcers of justice, you are terrorists

What bleeding hypocricy over Galloway's comments!

Let's say Britain had been invaded by another country and many tens of thousands of people killed in the process, who would not think it perfectly justifiable to get back at the head of the invading country by any means possible?

Without wishing to defend Saddam Hussein in general (and surely his uncritical defence of SH should be the major charge against Galloway?) there is hypocricy too about some of those so called war crimes. If any of the riots in this country had not just been disaffected youths throwing stones but an organised militia, armed with modern weapons including mortars and shoulder-launched rockets and having the backing of most people in their area and some foreign powers, would this government not have used troops? and would not hundreds of people now be dead?

PS

In any case, forget the Iraq war. We at bloggoth decided that it was morally justifiable, not to say morally imperative, to assassinate He-Who-Must-Be-Stabbed for IR35.

The ego of lefties

But was Galloway right to say it?

I don't think so. There is a reason for diplomatic language in politics. What us nobodies say is the railing of the impotent and affects nobody, but what those in positions of influence and authority say can make a big difference. Hard to see how any dialog could proceed at national or international level if everyone was quite so direct. We do need more honesty but there are ways of putting a point.

Livingstone is another twerp who continually puts his own ego above the interests of those who elected him. He could have pursued recovery of parking fines from embassies on behalf of London ratepayers much more effectively without calling the US ambassador a chiselling little crook. Any chance of progress on this issue must now be zero.

What do these two have in common? That's right. Blithering lefties!