Sim-O

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.

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.

Lets all give a big ‘ah’. Those horrible nasty leftie communist conspiracy loving traitors have made the BNP close it’s freepost address. From now on if you want to send the racist fucks anything you’ll have to pay for it yourself.

Please be aware that our FREEPOST address is no longer operational due to sustained abuse and illegal activity from our political opponents.

This matter is currently under police investigation and until further notice we would request that you use the following postal address instead;

Shame on you all. It’s not big and it not clever, but it was, apparently, expensive.

via T_P_W

The BBC caved in…

[Claimant] In September 2009, a joint statement was agreed and issued by Trafigura and the solicitors representing around 30,000 Ivorian claimants who had brought personal injury proceedings in the English High Court. The statement (which was endorsed by Mr Justice MacDuff, the Judge who had been due to hear the trial, as “100% truthful”) recorded that the experts instructed in that case had been unable to identify any link between exposure to the slops and the deaths, miscarriages and chronic and long-term injuries alleged.

Following Trafigura’s complaint over Newsnight’s story, the BBC carried out a detailed further review of the available evidence and of Trafigura’s detailed response in its Reply in these proceedings. The BBC accepts the conclusions reached by the experts in the personal injury action and reflected in the Reply. The BBC therefore acknowledges that the evidence does not establish that Trafigura’s “slops” caused any deaths, miscarriages or serious or long-term injuries. Accordingly, the BBC has withdrawn those allegations and has agreed to broadcast an appropriate apology on Newsnight, to join in the making of this Statement in Open Court, and to publish the Statement on its website.

Defendant

My Lord, on behalf of the BBC I accept everything my friend has said. The BBC withdraws the allegation that deaths, miscarriages or serious or long-term injuries were caused by the waste and apologises to Trafigura for having claimed otherwise.

The BBC hopes that by the joining in the making of this Statement it will assist in setting the record straight.

via BaldyWilson Index On Censorship

From a comment left a Matt Wardmans’ place…

The pre publication test case for libel the famous Groucho Club instigated against award winning filmmaker and writer Tyrone D Murphy is now at an end

The Groucho club, after nearly a year has issued discontinuance notice just a week before a case management conference was to take place where an order time for standard disclosure would have been made

The notice was issued shortly after a witness came forward. The statement was lodged with another Court in Wales in relation to a Data Protection Act case that Tyrone D Murphy issued against the Groucho Club

The witness who was a manager from the Groucho Club had just left his employment at the Club recently. His detailed statement not only refutes the Groucho Club statement of case but is a detailed statement of the events at the Groucho Club over a five year period.

The case now being at an end, no deal was done or no deal will be done. The book “The Groucho Gate Affair” is going ahead.

www,g-book.co.uk

The Groucho Club didn’t really have much to say on the matter.

Background here.

Trafigura, the multinational oil company that got it lawyers, those most ethical of legal eagles Carter-Ruck, to put a super-injunction on the UK press and, inadvertantly or not, Parliament have threatened to sue the BBC about a Newsnight report.

That report has now gone. It’s been pulled. Below is the Newsnight report:

The is also a .pdf of the report too.

For more see Richard Wilson.

Please embed the videos (1, 2) and link to the .pdf on your site too.

/via D-Notice

I still haven’t had a proper reply to my email to Selly Oaks Hospital regarding the BNP donating the funds from the sale of their ‘Bring Our Troops Home’ stickers. I sent my original letter on 4th December and have only had one reply. That reply was…

I have replied to you

I originally thought Ms Fiona Alexander, the hospitals Director of Communications, had replied and I had accidentally deleted deleted it or was sent but didn’t get to me for some reason. Now I think it was childish joke.

Thanks Fiona, for taking me oh, so seriously. That made you look sooo clever.

Moving on, because, I’m bigger than that, I’m not the snarky idiot, it appears a *real* journalist got a reply. No, really I don’t mind. Selly Oaks has refused the donation…

a spokesman for Selly Oak Hospital, which houses the army’s Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, said: “The British National Party is selling merchandise with the promise of donating the proceeds to the Selly Oak Hospital burns unit.
“Neither the University Hospitals of Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust nor its official charity, UHB Charities, have been contacted by the BNP about this venture, and the Trust does not accept money from any political party,”

So. That’s a partial answer to the couple of questions in my email. That’ll do.

The BNP, typically, haven’t changed their article, or stuck up a new one, to let people know that the hospital won’t accept their donation, and are presumably still selling them under that guise (although I could be wrong).

The spin machine elsewhere has started to work. One of their top supporting blogs, Green Arrow, has a few words to say about it…

it seems strange that an hospital that is supposed to care for people would prefer them to suffer than accept money from a political party because they do not approve of its policies.

See what they did there? The hospital refused the donation not because the BNP are a political party but because the hospital doesn’t like it’s policies. The hospital though, doesn’t accept donations from any political party irrespective of policies.

I’m just surprised Selly Oaks hasn’t been called a communist organisation that’s part of the leftie conspiracy to replace the white man with in his own home.

I was going to post this once I got a reply, but I’m getting a bit impatient so I’m doing it now.

To: Fiona Alexander
From: Sim-O
Subject: BNP Donation

Good morning Ms Alexander,
The British National Party have launched a ‘Bring Our Troops Home’ sticker, declaring all the proceeds will be donated to Selly Oaks Hospital burns unit.

As you probably know, the BNP is a racist and divisive organisation that is “is wholly opposed to any form of racial integration between British and non-European peoples” and is “committed to stemming and reversing the tide of non-white immigration”.

‘Opposed to any form of racial integration’ sound strikingly similar to apartheid, doesn’t it?

‘Reversing the tide of non-white immigration’ is a term the BNP use for the deportation of people, British people to other countries. This would include, not just recent immigrants, but people born here, have had family in Britain for generations and which no other country has an obligation to take purely on the basis of the colour of the persons’ skin.

With this in mind, have the BNP informed you of their declared intention of donating money from the sale of these stickers to the Selly Oaks Hospital burns unit? If so, have they told you when that donation might happen?

What is your reaction? Do you have a statement?

Will the hospital be accepting the donation, which the BNP will no doubt use for political purposes?

Does the hospital have a policy regarding donations from political parties, as apposed to a campaigning local MP? If so, what is that policy?

Thank you for you time.

Sim-O
http://sim-o.me.uk

Update 09/12/09:
I got a reply.

Right. Lets get straight in to it.

The Labour Government’s Equality Bill, announced yesterday in the Queen’s speech, will actively discriminate against all white people in business and put large companies under a legal obligation to employ Asians or blacks rather than whites.

Guess who said that? Nope. Not the Daily Mail. Close though. Those words are the start of a big steaming pile of lies from the BNP.

In terms of the Equality Act, companies will be “encouraged” to favour black and Asian candidates over white people when recruiting. In addition, where companies have a choice between equally qualified men and women, they are obliged to employ the woman.

I had a little look and, astoundingly, their wrong.

I had a quick squint for the bill and and found two. The Equality and Diversity BIll and the Equality Bill. I’m not sure if they’re two different things or one is a summary of the other so lets look at them both.

The Equality and Diversity Bill is pretty simple and straightforward in it’s purpose…

A Bill To Prohibit the use of affirmative and positive action in recruitment and appointment processes; to repeal the Sex Discrimination Act (Election Candidates) Act 2002; and for connected purposes.

And what is ‘positive or affirmative action’?…

For the purpose of this Act, “affirmative or positive action” means any action that is intended to give a benefit or encouragement to a particular group or groups of people, on the basis of the—
(a) age,
(b) sex,
(c) sexual orientation,
(d) race,
(e) nationality,
(f) disability,
(g) religion, or
(h) socio-economic status of members of that group.

Not really obliging anyone to do anything except judge people on their merits, does it? And what of the other bill (please bear with me, I’m not used to all this parliamentary language and stuff so as I said above, it could well be the same thing)?

In Part 2, Equality: key concepts, Chapter 1: protected characteristics are listed as…

The following characteristics are protected characteristics—

• age;
• disability;
• gender reassignment;
• marriage and civil partnership;
• pregnancy and maternity;
• race;
• religion or belief;
• sex;
• sexual orientation

Pretty much the same as the Equality and Diversity Bill. Here are some examples from it explaining what discrimination is…

Direct discrimination
(1) person (A) discriminates against another (B) if, because of a protected characteristic, A treats B less favourably than A treats or would treat others.
(2) If the protected characteristic is age, A does not discriminate against B if A can show A’s treatment of B to be a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.
(3) 10If the protected characteristic is disability, A does not discriminate against B only because—
(a) A treats a third person who has a disability in a way which is permitted
by or under this Act,
(b) B does not have the disability, and
(c) 15A does not treat B in that way.
(4) If the protected characteristic is marriage and civil partnership, this section applies to a contravention of Part 5 (work) only if the treatment is because B is married or a civil partner.
(5) If the protected characteristic is race, less favourable treatment includes segregating B from others.
(6) If the protected characteristic is religion or belief, it does not matter whether the religion or belief is also A’s.
(7) If the protected characteristic is sex—
(a) less favourable treatment of a woman includes less favourable treatment of her because she is breast-feeding;
(b) in a case where B is a man, no account is to be taken of special treatment afforded to a woman in connection with pregnancy or childbirth.
(8) Subsection (7)(a) does not apply for the purposes of Part 5 (work).
(9) This section is subject to sections 16(6) and 17(7)

Here, the closest it gets to discrimination against men is 7, b, any special treatment of a woman due to pregnancy or childbirth in some way is to be ignored. Nowhere in either of these documents does it say that white men must be put to the back of the cue, ignored, not given the same rights as others.

The racists casually drop in…

To enforce compliance with that provision, the Equality Act will also order companies with more than 250 employees to have “gender pay audits.”

In effect this means that any company which does not actively discriminate against white males will be in contravention of the “gender pay audit” section of the act. In effect it means that any large company must discriminate against whites in order to comply with the law.

What the hell does that mean? A ‘gender pay audit’ doesn’t discriminate against males, white or otherwise. The idea is to shame companies into paying women the same as men. To stop discrimination against women. In reality, this will probably mean that companies will drop the pay of men rather than raise the wage of women, y’know, what with the mindset of the capitalist, but it’s still not discrimination. The second ‘in effect’ is just a complete non-sequitur. It doesn’t make sense.

The BNP article also says that Roman Catholic Bishops are warning that Christmas could be banned by the Equality Act. They make use of Andrew Summersgills, the General Secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference, appearance in the racists favourite comic, the Daily Mail, where he states Christmas is already being banned, using the Oxford Winter Light Festival as an example. Five Chinese Crackers debunked this on 3rd November 2008. Where he shows that Winter Light Festival lasted for one night and covered lots of events including swithcing on the Christmas lights and various other stuff with Christmas in their names all going on. 5CC has done the same to the myth that Dundee has banned Christmas this year.

Now, the Bishops wouldn’t have a vested interest in seeing the Equality bill fail, would they? After all, Catholicism is such an exinclusive religion and doesn’t demonise whole sections of communities that don’t fit with their world view… what? Oh.

This is classic bullshit from the BNP, take something that is supposed to help bring equality to people, and because it is removing the white males advantage, not putting him at a disadvantage, they lie about it.

They lie about it because they have no arguments. They haven’t linked to anything, which is nothing unusual, the press don’t normally either, and they haven’t even quoted the offending parts of the bill to back up their case. They use the Daily Mail, with it’s agenda driven scare stories, removing themselves from the responsibility of fact checking because something has appeared in the mainstream media.

The BNP are supposed to be a political party, this article of theirs proves many things, among them i) they lie ii) they are racist ii) they are sexist. But we all new that anyway. There’s no couched language here just lies. Lies that’ll get repeated and passed around and you’ll eventually hear it from your non-racist mates, if you haven’t already.