Sim-O

*ahem*

I’ve just listened to Radio 1 for the first time in a looong time and Newsbeat came on.

They had a quick bit about roadside testing for drug-drivers and they featured a quote from some cunt from Transform.

On Newsbeats website, the story is featured but not with the quote from the Transform chap.

Now, I’ve not looked at the Transform website in any detail so I don’t know if the drugs policy changes they advocate are any good, so like wise I don’t know if they’re heroes or wankers, but this chap that featured on Newsbeat has a fucking weird grasp of logic.

I’m gonna paraphrase things here, but essentially he said that this idea to test drivers for drugs is ridiculous because it would basically criminalise using drugs and turn a whole heap of people into criminals.

What. The actual. Fuck?

First off, illegal drug taking is already all but illegal. It is illegal to sell and to possess controlled substances, and seeing as you can’t put anything in your body yourself without, however briefly possessing it, people that take illegal drugs are criminals already.

Secondly, how is it criminalising being under the influence of drugs? it is criminalising driving whilst under the influence of drugs. There is a *big* difference.

The obvious analogy is alcohol. The current drink-driving laws don’t make being boozed up illegal but they do make it illegal to drive with over a certain amount of alcohol in your blood.

Is this cunt seriously advocating repealing the drink-drive laws?

Whoever from Transform let this dickhead loose in front of a microphone must’ve been off their head.

The American 1% defend themselves…

At a lunch in New York, Stemberg and Allison shared their disdain for Section 953(b) of the Dodd-Frank Act, which requires public companies to disclose the ratio between the compensation of their CEOs and employee medians, according to Allison. The rule, still being fine-tuned by the Securities and Exchange Commission, is “incredibly wasteful” because it takes up time and resources, he said. Stemberg called the rule “insane” in an e-mail to Bloomberg News.

“Instead of an attack on the 1 percent, let’s call it an attack on the very productive,” Allison said. “This attack is destructive.”

via Geeoharee

Jon Slattery…

Lord Hunt, PCC chairman since October, told Exaro in an interview with David Hencke: “At the moment, it is like the Wild West out there. We need to appoint a sheriff.”

His initial plan for online media is to invite bloggers who write on current affairs to volunteer to be regulated by the replacement body for the PCC.

Lord Hunt wants a ‘kitemark’ style badge for bloggers, who will have to pay for the privelige.

When this type of thing was suggested for the papers at last years Editors Cose review it was given no thought at all. I realise that the PCC was Baroness Buscombe then, but still. The idea of regulating blogs was also raised by the PCC then, and the response was a big resounding no by bloggers. How would it work? Who would it cover? It would just be unenforcable etc.

Lord Hunt should concentrate on getting together a proper regulatory process with proper sanctions before trying to widen his remit.

Until then, Lord Hunt can go fuck himself.

Independent…

The co-founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales has criticised Bell Pottinger’s “ethical blindness” as the lobbying company admitted altering details of its clients’ reputations online.

Bell Pottinger last night said that its digital team used a number of accounts to edit Wikipedia articles, although it stressed it had never done anything illegal.

Last night, Mr Wales told The Independent: “I am astonished at the ethical blindness of Bell Pottinger’s reaction. That their strongest true response is they didn’t break the law tells a lot about their view of the world, I’m afraid.

Of course they’re ‘ethically blind’. They’re fucking paid mouthpieces. You pay them money, they make you look good, or not as bad as you really are.

There are ‘ethical’ PR/lobbying firms out there. That’s the surprise.

footnote:
Its nice to see Tim get credited, and to see him doing something other than fire-fighting all that shit the fucking Tories and their hangers on keep throwing at him.

Guardian…

European leaders have embarked on a mammoth effort to forestall the ruin of the single currency at what was seen as the most important Brussels summit in years, with France, Germany and the leaders of the eurozone lined up against David Cameron and his campaign to extract a price in return for agreeing to Europe’s new “fiscal compact”.

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said the two-day summit was the EU’s last chance to save the euro. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, the central figure pushing a new punitive euro regime, voiced confidence that a satisfactory deal would be reached. Cameron insisted he wanted a “fair deal” for Britain and warned he would not hesitate to veto Franco-German proposals unless he got something in return.

Tough-talking Cameron. Showing them foreigners who’s boss, eh?

In what was seen as a warning on behalf of Germany and France, Jean-Claude Juncker, the prime minister of Luxembourg and chairman of the Eurogroup, told Cameron to back off or face the prospect of being sidelined by a new treaty forged simply among the 17 eurozone countries.

Does he really think that all these countries that are directly affected gonna not implement what they think they need to because some jumped up, shiny headed, PR man from Britain thinks it’s a bad move for his tiny country?

The Eurozone, those countries that use the Euro currency, are the majority. 17 out of 27 countries. This summit is about saving the Euro, not bringing closer integration or forwarding the European project. This is not about us. It’s about them.

Cameron hasn’t got a chance, what-ever happens he’s fucked, at home or abroad and he’s just carries on like nobodies noticed.

Upponnothing…

My thoughts on Clarkson’s comments are simple: make them on TV and you can expect to get lots of complaints and outrage; make them in a newspaper and you’d be handsomely rewarded as a ‘star’ columnist. If anything, Clarkson has just provided a perfect example of the kind of jokey hyperbole he gets away with in print without a whisper of outrage being deemed as the work of Satan just because he said it on TV.

There is a very interesting double standard in this country when it comes to what is acceptable on TV compared to what is acceptable in print. Just imagine – for example – a TV news broadcast flicking from a serious news story to an upskirt shot of some female celeb getting out of a taxi or a video report about what Suri Cruise has worn during the week or how ‘she looks all grown up’. It, of course, would probably crash the phone network as outraged masses call in their disgust and complaints.

Yet this is what we get in the tabloids. It seems to me that British Society finds the medium of TV inherently more offensive than the medium of print.

Scottish comedian Brian Limond (@daftlimmy) expressed how happy he would be when Thatcher dies and Louise Mensch, the Conservative MP for Corby, is horrified, horrified I tells you, that the BBC would employ such a man…

Free speech includes the right to be offensive. It includes the right to describe an old woman in terms of such bitter hatred that you talk about her death being a jackpot. It includes the right to post faux-serious arguments like saying you are “removed from reality” if you don’t see that old woman’s death as a celebration. But the point is that our license fee should not go to BBC Scotland so they can commission multiple series from a healthy, middle-aged male who chooses to rain such hate on a woman of eighty-six, now mentally frail, vulnerable and unable to answer him back or defend herself. I hope Mr Limond feels like a big man for frothing over the forthcoming death of a very old woman.

Brian Limond didn’t say he would kill the ex-Priminister, just that he would be so happy he doesn’t think his heart would be able to take it.

I can only imagine how upset and disturbed Louise Mensch is about another BBC employee stating how, if he were in charge he would execute people in front of their family for striking…

Clarkson was asked what he would do with strikers, he replied: “I would have them all shot.”

He continued: “I would take them outside and execute them in front of their families.”

I await an outraged article in a newspaper somewhere calling for the BBC to give this psychopath the sack instead of our hard earned licence fee.

(last paragraph amended so it wasn’t a load of gibberish)