Sim-O

So the fascination with celebrities by politicians carries on.

Telegraph:

David Cameron was due to unveil a package of proposals aimed at improving numeracy, including a maths task force headed by former Countdown host Carol Vorderman.

I don’t deny Carol is good at maths. To most ordinary people the speed at which she can multiply 7×6 is phenominal. The way she does division, what I’ve always found rather taxing, is just well, stunning. But how good is she? Really? She may be the most famous maths person, but that doesn’t make her the best person for the job. She could be the Austin Allegro of the maths world for all we know.
Does Carol know anything about teaching or teaching methods? I’d guess not. In reality, she is just a TV presenter “with good mathematical skills“.

See also Dungeekin: Vorderman to Front Tory Numeracy Initiative

Winners don’t use drugs.

Don’t they? Looks like he’s an old pro, too. You don’t pick up a bong the first you smoke Mary-Jane, especially not in public.

Lenin:

Those few who are raising slogans like ‘British jobs for British workers’ need to sort their arguments out, because they’re wrong and they’re misleading, and they seriously damage the prospects for solidarity. What’s more, they got that slogan from Gordon Brown, and that itself should warn them that there’s something wrong with it.
…
This is about the way Italian workers, who aren’t responsible for this problem, are being used in an attempt to break trade union organisation among construction workers in the UK, and in particular to break the terms of previous agreements. If it was about anything else, why would the employers exclude them from the jobs in advance? Why shouldn’t the jobs be open to anyone?

Guardian: Oil Refinery Dispute

Rebakah Wade speaking at the Cudlipp Lecture:

The quality of our journalism will make or break our industry, not the recession

If that’s the case, a few papers should expect to disappear soon, then.

A heads-up from Justin on something MPs’ want to keep to themselves:

Unlock Democracy:

On Thursday, the Government sneaked out the draft of the innocuous sounding “Freedom of Information (Parliament) Order.” This “statutory instrument” (not an act), if passed, will

“…change the scope of the application of the [Freedom of Information] Act in relation to information held by the House of Commons and House of Lords regarding expenditure in respect of Members of both Houses. This includes information held by either House about expenses claimed by and allowances paid to Members. Such information is no longer within the scope of the Act.”

In short, they intend to exempt the expenses of MPs and Lords from the Freedom of Information Act and thereby close them to public scrutiny. This is to be passed almost a year to the day after the Derek Conway scandal erupted, when it emerged that the MP had been paying his sons as research staff while they were at university, despite not being able to demonstrate that they had actually done any work for him. If the Government gets away with this, scandals such as this will be allowed to continue and we will not be permitted to find out about them.

It is completely outrageous that the Government should seek to do this at all, let alone in such an underhand manner. The Government is planning to put us all on a national identity database, force us to carry identity cards, keep the DNA of millions of innocent people on a database and to read all our emails, phone and internet records regardless of whether we are supposed to have done anything wrong. Their argument is always “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” Why, then, is it one rule for us and another rule for politicians?

What’s more, when Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, one of his first acts was to publish the Governance of Britain Green Paper which asserted that “It is right that Parliament should be covered by the [Freedom of Information] Act.”

This proposal is going to be debated in the House of Commons this Thursday – we don’t have much time. For this reason I am strongly urging you to do the following as a matter of urgency:

• Write to your MP (use www.writetothem.com) and urge them “to sign the Early Day Motion “Freedom of Information (Parliament) Order 2009 (Jo Swinson MP)” – the text of this motion is below for your reference.
• Phone your MP’s office (the main switchboard is 020 7219 3000) and ask to talk to him or her to ask them to oppose this proposal.
• If you are on Facebook, join our group and invite all your friends to join – ESPECIALLY the ones not normally interested in politics.
• Forward this article to everyone you know either by email or any social bookmarking websites you use.

Please, please do this as soon as you can. We can defeat this proposal if we put pressure on MPs this week. In 2007, a group of backbench MPs attempted to get a similar proposal passed. We beat them then and we can beat them again.

With best wishes,

Peter Facey
Director, Unlock Democracy

TEXT OF EARLY DAY MOTION [EDM 492]

Freedom of Information (Parliament) Order 2009
Primary Sponsor: Jo Swinson (LD, East Dunbartonshire)

That this House notes with concern the provisions in the Freedom of Information (Parliament) Order 2009 to exempt remove the expenses of Members of Parliament and Peers from the scope of the Freedom of Information Act’; notes that this order will single out MPs and Peers in a special category as the only paid public officials who will note have to disclose full details of their expenses; notes with concern the regressive effect of this Order on Parliamentary transparency and the detrimental impact it will have on Parliament in the eyes of the public; calls on Ministers to block or repeal the Order in the interest of MPs’ and Peers’ accountability to members of the public.

If someone told you a lie, to try and wind you up or manipulate them, you wouldn’t be happy, would you? You’d tell them to bugger off.

If someone asked you why you had someone as a mate when all that mate did was chat shit and try and get you into fights and you replied that, it’s ok, no one believes what they say. You would be laughed at.

So why do people buy a newspaper, when to justify or counter the question of why they buy it, they respond, ‘no-one believes the Sun’ or ‘everyone knows it’s not true’?

If you know it’s full of lies or not true, why buy it?

Oh yes, the football and the racing. Fair enough, but then why not miss out all the bile, hate , contradictions and lies and just buy Shoot* or Racing Post?

If you like fictional stories, go to the library. It’d be cheaper and the stories will be better written too.

The line ‘no-one believes the Sun’ is a lie itself. Because the people behind these news agencies do.

*not being into the girly game of football, I couldn’t think of another footy publication so Shoot might not be the best example of a serious football news resource.

Apparently someone starts their new job today.

You’ll excuse me if I don’t get too excited about it. It may be historic in that this will be the first black president of the United States, but that’s it isn’t it? What other way is this special?

Don’t get me wrong, I think Barak will be a better president that the previous effort, but I’m not really expecting anything too radical. After all, in any established political system there are vested interests that do not like change, and to get any sort of meaningful change Mr Obama is going to need more than just the support of the Democrats. the Republicans need to be in on it too. Is that going to happen.

President Obama may be a good guy, but before we all start pissing our pants in anticipation for the saviour of the free world, I think I hang on and see how much to the left he wants to go and how much he is allowed to go.

BBC:

A Christian bus driver has refused to drive a bus with an atheist slogan proclaiming “There’s probably no God”.

Ron Heather, from Southampton, Hampshire, responded with “shock” and “horror” at the message and walked out of his shift on Saturday in protest.

You small minded, petty, shit stirring little fucker.
How the fuck did you, Mr Heather, get through to the ripe old age that you have by being shocked and horrorfied by statements that differ from your opinion?

“I felt that I could not drive that bus, I told my managers and they said they haven’t got another one and I thought I better go home, so I did.
Mr Heather said he was shocked at the “starkness” of the advert

“I think it was the starkness of this advert which implied there was no God.”

Starkness? Fucking Starkness? You Ron, I can call you Ron, can’t I? I feel I know you so well already, are a twat. That is not a stark message. It’s not even asserting for definate that there isn’t a god. It’s saying that there’s a possibility there is no god. If that message was said to you by a person, that person would be looking at their feet, shuffling nervously and mumbling under their breath.

Do you stop non-christians from travelling on your bus, incase they turn believers away from the one true faith? Do you think that the anti-god message is going to leave you a sitting duck for the anti-christ? Once you’ve left the bus station the evil sprirts will think you’re one of them and take control? You’ll lose you sense of moral decency and stop buying the Mail for the Guardian and start voting LibDem?

Let me reassure you, Ronny, about what will happen if you drive that bus:
You will drive it out of the bus station, some people will get on, some people will get off. Some people will see the advert and think “heh”. Others will think “hrumph”. Most others will not even notice it. You will return the bus to the station and go home to await the next thing to offend you. The world will carry on as it was before, not having had Lucifer unleashed on us all.

I am just flabbergasted that someone can be so fucking precious that a statement so unsure of itself can give theman excuse to fuck off home in a sulk.

You’re not offended, Ron. You’re just workshy, aren’t you.

via

Anyone. It could’ve been anyone but them!

Labours propaganda outlet, labourlist has recruited the slimey shits Shillings to watch their back in the comments.

Manic has spotted it and seen a remarkable similarity in the accountability of the site to some more erm, prominent, bloggers.:

Now Draper is insisting that he is not accountable to me. So he accepts comments, but refuses accountability – and here I will remind you again that he learned what little he knows by watching Dale and Staines in action. Nowhere is this influence more obvious than in his stated policy that those who are unhappy about this state of affairs should essentially ‘get their own blogs’ and make their case there. In other words, if you’re not happy that your question was refused or shouted down at a public meeting, you’re invited to go outside and hold your own meeting. Nice.

Actually, they’re made for each other, Labour and Schillings. They’re both information and image control freaks in the pay of the capitalist classe