Sim-O

“It’s wrong to refer to the deductions as ‘bed and breakfast’ as they are made in respect of the costs an individual would have had to pay out of their net income on things such as a mortgage or rent.”

Said a Ministry Of Justice statement.

This refers to Warren Blackwell, who was imprisoned for three and a half years for a crime he didn’t commit and is about the compensation he is going to receive, thought to be about £100k, which will be deducted almost £7000 for expenses he would’ve saved on, stuff like rent and food, whilst in prison.

Did you notice the Doublespeak that goes with the Orwellian name of Ministry of Justice:

Rachel North London could do with some help with some unwanted attention that she has dealt with tremendously, doing everything by the book, but needs some help to stop her stalker.

Follow the link, read Rachel’s words, see what you can do please.

I hope as many people would help me if I needed it.

Comments

Labels: Help Wanted

Warren Blackwell has spent 3 and a half years in prison. He spent that time in prison after wrongly being found guilty of rape.
It’s expected that he will be paid about £100k in compensation.
Unfortunate, but the compensation goes towards putting things right, not that 3 and a half years can be returned.

Mr Warren was told he would receive compensation minus £6,800, which has been assessed as the amount of money he had saved from normal expenses while in jail.

Assessed? Save from normal expenses? WTF??

This mans son was 3 when he went to prison because some lying bint accused him

Labels: Prison

7 weeks to go.

Labels: Blair

Fancy a chuckle?

Iain Dale has a piece on CiF about the freedom of speech and debate that blogging has brought to everyone.
Except he forgot to mention his sockpuppetry, anonymous bullies, distraction and diversion techniques and the latest one, his redirection script.

Laugh? I nearly shat!

Comments

Labels: Blogging, Freedom of Speech

Well, finger on the pulse once again, the Winograd Report, the interim report into Israels performance in the war with Hezbollah/Lebanon last summer is out, and it isn’t very good for Olmert or his Chief of Staff and Defence Minister.

Basically, it says that they had no clue as to what they were doing, had no experience of this sort of thing and didn’t take any advice from anyone that would know how to go about fucking up a country and have you own population think you did a good job.

• The Prime Minister made up his mind hastily, despite the fact that no detailed military plan was submitted to him and without asking for one. Also, his decision was made without close study of the complex features of the Lebanon front or of the military, political and diplomatic options available to Israel. He made his decision without systematic consultation with others, especially outside the IDF, despite not having experience in external-political and military affairs. In addition, he did not adequately consider political and professional reservations presented to him before the fateful decisions of July 12th.
• The Prime Minister is responsible for the fact that the goals of the campaign were not set out clearly and carefully, and that there was no serious discussion of the relationship between these goals and the authorized modes of military action. He made a personal contribution to the fact that the declared goals were over-ambitious and not feasible.
• The Prime Minister did not adapt his plans once it became clear that the assumptions and expectations of Israel’s actions were not realistic and were not materializing
• The Minister of Defense did not have knowledge or experience in military, political or governmental matters. He also did not have good knowledge of the basic principles of using military force to achieve political goals.
• Despite these serious gaps, he made his decisions during this period without systemic consultations with experienced political and professional experts, including outside the security establishment. In addition, he did not give adequate weight to reservations expressed in the meetings he attended.
• The Minister of Defense did not act within a strategic conception of the systems he oversaw. He did not ask for the IDF’s operational plans and did not examine them; he did not check the preparedness and fitness of IDF; and did not examine the fit between the goals set and the modes of action presented and authorized for achieving them. His influence on the decisions made was mainly pointillist and operational. He did not put on the table – and did not demand presentation – of serious strategic options for discussion with the Prime Minister and the IDF.
• The Minister of Defense did not develop an independent assessment of the implications of the complexity of the front for Israel’s proper response, the goals of the campaign, and the relations between military and diplomatic moves within it. His lack of experience and knowledge prevented him from challenging in a competent way both the IDF, of which he was in charge, and the Prime Minister
• The army and the COS were not prepared for the event of the abduction despite recurring alerts. When the abduction happened, he responded impulsively. He did not alert the political leaders to the complexity of the situation, and did not present information, assessments and plans that were available in the IDF at various levels of planning and approval and which would have enabled a better response to the challenges.
• Among other things, the COS did not alert the political echelon to the serious shortcomings in the preparedness and the fitness of the armed forces for an extensive ground operation, if that became necessary. In addition, he did not clarify that the military assessments and analyses of the arena was that there was a high probability that a military strike against Hezbollah would make such a move necessary.
• The COS’ responsibility is aggravated by the fact that he knew well that both the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense lacked adequate knowledge and experience in these matters, and by the fact that he had led them to believe that the IDF was ready and prepared and had operational plans fitting the situation.
• The COS did not provide adequate responses to serious reservations about his recommendations raised by ministers and others during the first days of the campaign, and he did not present to the political leaders the internal debates within the IDF concerning the fit between the stated goals and the authorized modes of actions.
• In all these the Chief of Staff failed in his duties as commander in chief of the army and as a critical part of the political-military leadership, and exhibited flaws in professionalism, responsibility and judgment.

I was going to emphasise parts, but pretty much all of it ended up in bold.

Labels: Israel, Lebanon

Background: Iain Dale. Guido Fawkes.

The whole point of a blog is to be able to track back through conversations and posts and comments using links to provide an illustrations, examples and references to various points in the conversations using hyperlinks.
So Why would two of the ‘Leading Political Bloggers’ (as they keep telling everyone) want to block links to their posts?

That is what Iain Dale and Paul Staines have done.
When you click on a link to anything on their sites from Bloggerheads or The UK Today, Iain redirects you to his front page, and ‘Guido’ sends you to Page3.com.
mmm. nice.

Come on guys, if you’re the cream of the bloggers and are honest, have nothing to hide, and consistent, what’s the problem? It’s not like they’re hard to get round, and the links to various posts help people understand the situation.
Or is that what you’re afraid of…?

Labels: Blogging

It’s 1st of May today.
It completely passed me by until during a quiet five minutes at work a looked at Lenins’ Tomb and saw that someone has done a good thing today.
Hugo Chavez announced that Venezuela will withdraw from the IMF and World Bank, is to increase their minimum wage and “set up a regional lending organisation that doesn’t insist on ‘structural adjustment programmes'”.
I wonder who will follow suit?

I thought I would mention it as it makes for some good news after the negative vibes that’s been going on here lately with Dead Tossers and Kate Moss.

It’s good, go have a look.

Labels: Chavez, Venezuela

So fucking what.
A clothes horse spends a few years wearing clothes that other people have designed and made and people go mental when Topshop launch a range clothes that she, er, put her name to, not designed, just stuck a label in them.
And the press go mental too. Well, wake up, it isn’t news, it’s a free fucking advertising.

Link

Labels: Capitalism