Sim-O

Daily Mail…

The father of James, Ralph Bulger, 43, said it was a ‘disgrace’ that his family was still in the dark about why Venables had been sent back to jail. ‘It is one more kick in the teeth for James and his family,’ he said.

Mr Straw said it was ‘not in the public interest’ to reveal how Venables, now 27, breached his parole nine years after he was controversially released from custody.

Yet hours earlier, Home Secretary Alan Johnson had declared on TV that he believed ‘the public do have a right to know’.

Do we? Really? Why do we have the right know why John Venables has been locked up again. In fact it could be said that we already know. The reason being that he violated the terms of his license.

He was given a second chance, unlike my son, but he has blown it and now he deserves for those same human rights to be revoked and for the Government to reveal all.

We, as a society, do not revoke human rights just like that, like criminals do*. As a society, i would hope, we are better than that. If Venables has blown his second chance then he will be prosecuted for any new crimes that he may have comitted and be suitably punished for them.

I’m not saying thatBut why do we have a right to know, apart from the shrill, emotional ‘because he’s a killer!’?

*Although some MPs think we should

Should Sky be hosting a debate of the three main party leaders?

Sky may be a big name, but they’re not exactly a national broadcaster, are they? They have what? Ten million subscribers (and expected to lose about 17% of them) and the whole of the Sky owned channels have about 7% of the nations viewers. They are not open to everyone like the terrestrial channels are.
For example, if you hardly ever watch the BBC, you could still switch over for and watch the debate about domestic issues, but if you want to watch the debate based on international affairs, which is the one Sky will be hosting, you can’t unless you subscribe to Sky for 12 months. Big important football games are shown on terrestrial and not just satellite channels, so why is this debate restricted to such a small audience?

Many people not only do not want Sky, but cannot justify the expense. In these days of everyone having to tighten their belts and the nature of these debates, being part of the general election campaign, should such a massive amount of people not be able to see it?

The Scots may be moaning about the way that there will be no representative from their major parties (aren’t they having their own debates now?) but with Sky showing one of the debates, it is like one of the terrestrially broadcast events being shown only on STV.

What I like about this country, is that for those most in need, those that can’t afford it themselves, there is legal aid provided for them.

(Click to enlarge.)

Get your own here.

via Chicken Yoghurt

The #kerryout campaign to unseat Bristol MP Kerry McCarthy is hotting up, but it’s a load of old bollox, really.

Tory-Politico…

Tomorrow [that's today, now] will see the launch of the #KerryOut campaign, which is being coordinated by some of the top Tory bloggers, and is designed to support Conservative PPC, Adeela Shafi, in her battle to unseat the disgraced MP.

I’m at work at the moment and because of restrictions on my computer can’t show you how those top tory bloggers are showing the nice side of the Conservatives on Twitter. I may do later if I remember/can be bothered.

There are a coup of things about this campaign that make it stand out as shit. The first is that Kerrys’ Bristol seat is a safe one, I gather, and so is unlikely to be lost, making all the effort and money spent wasted when, as the Tories should be concentrating their efforts on seats they have a chance of winning.

The second load of crap about this campaign is, what the fuck is it actually about? As far as I can tell, it’s about the way Kerry has embraced social media…

Labour’s self appointed ‘Twitter Tsar’, Kerry McCarthy, believes in the power of online media, so much so that following the Sun’s endorsement of David Cameron she tweeted “Labour doesn’t need the Sun – we’ve got Twitter!”

‘Self appointed Twitter Tsar’? Don’t give me that shit. Kerry is Labours’ online media capaign co-ordinator (or somesuch title). Last time I looked ‘online’ encompassed more than just fucking Twitter and the very fact the she is Labours’ campaign co-ordinator rules out the self appointed comment as, I’m fairly certain, Kerry isn’t the only member of the Labour Party.
That comment about not needing the Sun? For fucks sake. It’s tongue-in-cheek, a bit of rabble rousing. With a sense of humour failure like that, these cunts could pass as lefties.

Kerry has apparently been spending £400 a month on food, and I think, £400 on a new bed. Whoopy fucking do. Because of that Kerry is labelled ‘disgraced’. I’m not commenting directly whether it is right or wrong, but how about these petty Torie fuckers going after they’re own party memebers that have been feathering their nests.

The Independent…

Kerry McCarthy registered second home in Bristol in 2005. Claimed £117 hotel while claiming £600 in rent, refused by fees office. Bought house in London, claimed £3,657 for stamp duty and moving costs

Ok. That might seems a bit dodgy, might not look to good. How about removing ‘disgraced’ Tory MPs that have been troughing? Removing Theresa Villiers might make the Tory bunch of cunts more electable…

Theresa Villiers claimed almost £16,000 in stamp duty and professional fees on expenses when she bought a London flat, even though she already had a house in the capital.

or David Davis…

David Davis, the former shadow home secretary, who grew up on a council estate, spent more than £10,000 of taxpayers’ money on home improvements in four years.

or Greg Knight…

Greg Knight, an MP with a collection of classic cars, claimed £2,600 in expenses for repair work on the driveway at his designated second home as part of a £21,793 bill to the taxpayer for maintenance and security.

or James Clappison…

A shadow minister who owns 24 houses claimed more than £100,000 in expenses, including thousands for gardening and redecoration.

or… well, you get the picture.

The thing that is missing from this campaign is real reasons for getting rid of Kerry. Has she bolloxed up her constuency? Has she spouted a load of shite in commons debates, like her arch nemesis Nadine Dorries? I don’t know because #kerryout won’t tell me.

It’s just a childish, vindictive load of shit.

Fucking grow up you bunch of twats.

Louise Bagshawe, Conservative PCC for Corby…

@Placepot oh i think it’s totally a class issue. If Labour cared about animal cruelty why allow battery farming or cosmetic experimentation?

David Cameron…

“My own view is the hunting ban is a bad piece of legislation, it hasn’t worked, it has made a mockery of the law, a lot of time was wasted on it, and I think we would be better off without it. That gives you a clue to how I will vote.

Using the same logic as Louise, David Cameron doesn’t give a shit about animal cruelty. After all, if it’s alright to rip a fox to bits using dogs, which is undeniably cruel, then why is it wrong to kick the face off a dog, or to throw a cat in the river with only a couple of bricks for company in a bag or to make lame a horse with a blade in the middle of the night. Presumably by the logic that Louise forwards, the RSPCA should be a proscribed organisation.

The ban on fox hunting may be a poor piece of legislation, but that is no reason to repeal it, modify it instead. The Tories claim that they don’t like animal cruelty, who would claim otherwise? Are they going to ban battery farming or the use of animals in cosmetics manufacturing?

Nice bit of ‘whataboutery’ there, Louise.

The Guardian…

The Tories today promised to give £1m of taxpayers’ money as a cash prize to the person or team who manages to “harness the wisdom of the crowd” by producing an online platform to solve “common problems”.

The winning product must deliver an effective and available site for the public to post their ideas on, as well as a truly beneficial outcome for it to be worthy of the £1m payout, which the party says would be the biggest prize offered by a British government in the modern era.

WTF?

Ideas “to get the ball rolling” suggested by the Tories include: identifying and rooting out wasteful government spending, designing credit card bills that anyone can understand; rating the quality of schools and hospitals; making government information clear and simple; and – they say – picking the England squad for the 2010 World Cup.

So, the Tories think that there is no one in Whitehall that can go around the place and ask people “Why are you doing that?”, that there is no one in the whole of the fucking banking business that can draw up a simple way of billing people if they really had to? They think that we believe that they will take on a way of rating schools and hospitals that a government can’t fiddle to make themselves look better?
As far as clear, simple government information is concerned, the information given out usually looks like there is a deliberate effort to make it unfathomable so a £1m prize for making it clearer is gonna be easy money.

And for christs’ sake, a “truly beneficial outcome’? Picking the 2010 Footy squad? Fuck off. Just fuck. Right. Off.

OUTRAGED travellers demanded last night that Transport Secretary Lord Adonis return from holiday to tackle the UK’s travel nightmare.
The Cabinet minister had sloped off to a luxury Alpine skiing holiday in Austria while Britons slid and shivered on roads, railways and airport floors.

The above piece isn’t exactly a lie, which is why I’m posting here rather than at The Sun Lies, except that maybe travellers, although outraged, aren’t demanding Lord Adonis cut short his christmas holiday, as most probably didn’t even realise he was on holiday. The reader doesn’t find out, no travellers are quoted in the article, only bods from organisations and the like.

What has pee’d me off about this article is the way that the Sun starts off screaming about Lord Adonis ’sloping’* off for a ski holiday while the country grinds to a halt.

*From the Suns’ position, that is a fantastic pun. Not only does it fit with Adonis going on the piste**, but it aslo goes with the sneaky, useless Labour government narrative.

**apologies for that one.

The next paragraph carries on the narrative by introducing the bumbling sidekick…

Lord Adonis, 46, left his hapless deputy Sadiq Khan to face the avalanche of fury over cancellations, delays and the road gritting shambles.

That’s the groundwork for the piece laid down: the boss has snuk (sneaked?) off and left his bumbling deputy to cope.
Naturally the shadow local government minister is gonna have pop and say that Adonis should come back, via airports that are closed, to help out with a shovel and a bag of grit.

Once all that is set up there follows a great long list of things that have happened because of the cold, as if it’s Lord Adonis’ fault:

Nine people have died during the cold snap as temperatures plunged to as low as -16C in some parts of the UK.

Two women were killed and almost 50 injured when a coach overturned on icy roads in Cornwall late last night.

In Northamptonshire Paul Litchfield, 30, and Philip Sturridge, 42, drowned as they tried to rescue their pet Labrador from a frozen lake near Ringstead.

Adonis should’ve been handing out thermal underwear, and called the bus company to tell them not to send the driver out and gone onto the frozen lake himself instead of making those two chaps go out on the thin ice themselves to rescue a fucking dog.

In Sale, Greater Manchester, recovery worker Denis Livesly, 60, was killed as he attended to a car in a snowstorm on the M60 motorway.

Malcolm Brown, 32, was also killed in Basingstoke, Hampshire, when a deer smashed through his windscreen during a blizzard.

On the island of Lewis 35-year-old electrician Donald Martin froze to death after locking himself out of his home after a Christmas party.

How could Adonis have prevented Mr Livesly from dying? Deers are a nightmare whatever the weather, is it Adonis’ fault Donald Martin didn’t have the sense to smash a window to get back in his home?

There’s more stories about people trying to save their dogs and people dying after slipping on ice and aeroplanes slipping off the end of runways and trains and the Royal Mail and Asda and Eurostar and roads and… and… and…

If only Lord Adonis was here. The country would be able to stop being so shit at bad weather.

Democracy Club…

In elections these days, all major candidates have a huge team of volunteers behind them, helping them produce and distribute leaflets, get publicity in the local news media, raising their profile and painting a generally rosy picture of them.

But the public gets no such help. They are given election leaflets, party election broadcasts, newspaper interviews with candidates, but they are not given solid, factual information, or simple unbiased analysis of the truth value of these publicity campaigns, especially not at a local level.

We feel that the public needs its own team of volunteers to help them. We want you to be one of those volunteers: gather information on candidates, their leaflets, and local news coverage of them; or publicise vote analyses in local papers around the country; or do other tasks we haven’t even thought of yet.

With your help, we can give the public the same support that the candidates already get.