I can’t remember what I was up to but I fell across Malcolm Coles‘s post from last year highlighting 10 (more) websites that have a policy of not allowing incoming links or restricting them only to the homepage.
Bafflement ensues. I never knew there was such a thing.
I understand the need for corporations/organisations/charities to keep an eye on their brands and one way to do that is to try and control the anchor text and what pages are linked to. Fair enough, it’s their brand. They don’t want it trashed, but what sort of fucknut a) reads a website’s terms & conditions before using a site (apart from for research purposes) and b) sees the “Don’t Link to Us!” words and thinks “aw, shucks. I’m not allowed to link directly to that really handy, informative page. I’d better do as I’m told and link to the homepage instead.”
Is this particular little term & condition actually enforce-able? After all, the incoming link is coming from a website that is not under control of the linkaphobic site. Unless the anchor text is a lie or defamatory, then I can’t see how a site can enforce a request to have a link removed.
Getting a link removed or modified is purely down to the owner of the site that is linking out. Having a statement that says you’re not allowed to do something in your own backgarden, seems desperate and a bit of a warning of bully-boy tactics to come if not followed.
Be interesting, be relevant, be nice and then you won’t have to worry about what the incoming links are saying about you.
You may be aware that I’ve been asking Nadine Dorries a question via Twitter about whether she has dontated her MP’s salary for the period she was in the I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! jungle, as she promised she would.
I’ve been asking this question for sometime now, a couple of months. If you click the link, you’ll see that I’ve been perfectly reasonable and polite, no abuse, no swearing, just a reasonably worded question.
when I was getting the tweets together for this I realised Nadine had blocked me. I don’t know when as I don’t use Twitters web interface very often, but I do know that I wasn’t blocked when I started asking.
Dorries has seen the question and instead of engaging in anyway whatsoever, not even a ‘sod off’, she’s chosen to block me and ignore a valid question about her taxpayer funded salary, her integrity and whether she is as good as her word.
So, another approach is needed. I iwould write a letter or email to her, but as I’m not one of her constiuents, she is under no obligation to reply. Dorries will immediately bin and correspondence I have with her. Good or bad.
What I need is a little help.
I need someone who Dorries represents in Parliament to ask her directly whether she has kept her word and donated 12 days worth of her parliamentary salary to charity. Hopefully finding out how much and to which charities, but that bit is even more unlikely as the charities (i think) will be under no obligation to verify.
Anyone fancy writing a polite letter to their MP for me?
The rest of this article is interesting but as a shy person, this struck a chord with me…
Zimbardo began thinking of shy people as incarcerating themselves in a silent prison, in which they also acted as their own guards, setting severe constraints on their speech and behaviour that were self-imposed although they felt involuntary.
What happened to the mantra of ‘choice’? Choice in hospitals, choice in schools, in amenities?
This idea can get to fuck, to be honest. A school is somewhere that I have to send my children. I do not get a choice in that. Fair enough that restaurants and cafes say that you can’t eat your own food on their premises, you have a choice to either stay there or bugger off and eat somewhere else. You don’t have that choice when you have to be somewhere by law.
There’s plenty of other things that can be done, like banning chocolate and crisps and the like from packed lunches. Many schools already do, but to force parents to have school dinners is ridiculous.
Most schools do not even have a kitchen nowadays and so will have to buy the lunches in. Yes, Jamie Oliver may have shown that good, cheap meals can be provided but how many schools will actually be able to provide that and if they do, how long will it be before standards start to slip due to either budgets being cut or suppliers cutting corners?
Another, meaner part of me thinks I don’t give a fuck what other parents give their kids. I provide mine with a good packed lunch, fuck the rest. Sure, make provision for the less well off kids with free school lunches, and some of the stories I’ve heard, some kids really do need the help, desparetely.
The rest though, it’s their kids the parents are failing. Fuck ’em. let them fail their kids.
Funnily enough, it may be a government commissioned report that advises banning packed lunches, but who are the authors? Restuarantuers. I wonder if the same result would’ve been arrived at if it had been written by someone not in the private sector food trade, someone independent?
Am I missing something here? The Telegraph is getting it’s gender-specific underwear in a twist over nothing, isn’t it?
The first part of this, frankly, piss poor piece starts of invoking Orwell, by claiming the government is changing the meaning of the words ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ to make them interchangeable…
Civil servants have overruled the Oxford English Dictionary and hundreds years of common usage effectively abolishing the traditional meaning of the words for spouses.
[…]
It comes as part of a Government initiative to “clarify” what words will mean when gay marriage becomes law.
But critics described it as the vocabulary of “cloud cuckoo land”.
It follows claims by opponents of the redefinition of marriage that universally understood terms such as father and mother might be simply deleted by bureaucrats on official forms.
That would be fucking mad, wouldn’t it? How can the government just get rid of words? That’s just downright, er, erm, Orwellian!
Fear not, dear reader. We now move into the second part of the article where some sense is spoken, but not very clearly, if anyone got that far past the outrage just gushing out from the page.
Instead officials have decided to allow the words for the spouses to be used interchangeably for people of either gender in some contexts.
You see? “Some contexts”. The Telegraph gives an example…
The guidance gives the example of some early health and safety legislation drafted in 1963 which includes a range of exemptions for family businesses where the terms husbands and wives will mean people of either gender.
“This means that ‘husband’ here will include a man or a woman in a same sex marriage, as well as a man married to a woman,” it says.
“In a similar way, ‘wife’ will include a woman married to another woman or
a man married to a man.
“The result is that this section is to be construed as including both male and female same sex marriage.”
Yet it then goes on to say that in future legislation the traditional male-only meaning of husband and female-only understanding of wife could make a comeback – but not in all cases.
“The term ‘husband’ will in future legislation include a man who is married to another man (but not a woman in a marriage with another woman),” it adds, confusingly.
“And ‘wife’ will include a woman who is married to another woman (but not a man married to another man) unless specific alternative provision is made.”
Er, yeah. That is confusing. It would be much easier to say in existing legislation, ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ can be interchangeable depending on the circumstances, and the people the legislation applies to, which will not be a problem to devine
In future legislation a ‘husband’ is a married man and a ‘wife’ is a married woman, irrespective of what gender their spouse is.
See? That’s not so hard is it? It doesn’t quite fit the agenda of needlessly restricting who can marry who to fit some outdated bigotry, though.
Nadine Dorries is to stop claiming personal parliamentary expenses to avoid being further ‘targeted’ by investigations.
Speaking exclusively to the Times & Citizen, the MP for Mid Bedfordshire revealed that she will forego around £3,040 a month in expenses including cash for Westminster accommodation, council tax, travel costs and meals.
She said: “For me the problem is the moment I put my head above the parapet and campaigned to have the abortion limit reduced from 24 weeks to 20 I became a target.”
Well, yes wanting to be more restrictive on abortion is one of the reasons Dorries gets a load of shit, and it’s not just the time limit that she want’s introduced that’s got peoples hackles up, but her proposed restriction on who can give counselling that would see many non-religious, pro-choice organisations excluded and the only choice many women would have would be to receive counselling by anti-abortion organisations.
But the reason Dorries keeps getting her expenses investigated is not because of her views on abortion, it’s her attitude to claiming them. See Ministy of Truth here or really just enter into the search box of the site “nadine dorries“.
She added: “Even though I’m completely innocent it’s tough for my office staff because they are the ones who are responsible for compliance.
“Every time there is an investigation it goes on for months and I can’t keep putting them through it.
We shall have to see if Dorries is completely innocent or not, but an appeal for everyone to stop reporting her not-so-straight-forward-expenses reporting would be a nice touch, if she didn’t keep giving IPSA reason to investigate her.
The only person able to stop the ivestigations if Dorries herself.
“I’ve had to take this decision it’s been horrible to see how stressed they have been, even though the investigations always fully cleared me.”
She said: “I feel that the best thing to do is to remove all claims and I’m lucky because I’ve got personal support and can do that. I’ve got a great partner.”
She added: “I’m going to work for free, I have to live in Bedfordshire because it’s what my constituents expect from me, but as I sit on and chair committees I have to have accommodation in Westminster.”
Another, fairly major sleight of hand there, as she won’t be working for free, being paid nothing. She will still get the £65k-ish salary. But not claiming expenses is not the thing to do. Dorries here, knows she’s going to get her knuckles rapped. She may not get a proper bollocking, but she knows it looks bad and so instead of looking at why her expenses look so bad and trying to organise things better, she’s trying to make herself a matyr.
Fair enough. If she doesn’t want her expenses, fine. She’ll be the one to lose out.
While we’re talking about Dorries’ salary, she did promise to donate to charity her salary for the time she spent in the jungle on I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here!. She was on it for 12 days which works out at about £2,100 -ish.
I don’t think I need to add anything more to the following from Johnny Void (although it is my emphasis)…
From October this year [Employment Support Allowance] claimants will not be able to appeal against a ‘fit for work’ decision until they have first requested a ‘mandatory reconsideration’ by a DWP decision maker. Only if the claimant disagrees with this decision will they be able to take an appeal to a benefit tribunal. This process is likely to take months.
A recent response to an FOI request (PDF) confirms that claimants will not be able to claim ESA whilst waiting for this process to be completed. The DWP say that claimants will instead have the: “option of applying for alternative benefits, such as Jobseekers Allowance, however they must meet the conditions of entitlement”.
One of the key conditions of entitlement for Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) – the benefit for those unemployed not unwell – is that the claimants is able to work.
This will mean that those appealing an ESA decision and claiming Jobseekers Allowance will be placed in a potentially fraudulent position. They will be appealing an ESA decision based on the fact they do not believe themselves able to work, and will be claiming JSA based on a claim that they are able to work.
The news is all about the killing in Woolwich, as you’d expect.
The reports are all very similar, but there is one line in The Sun that caught my eye as really rather odd.
The men were said to have been of Muslim appearance.
Said by who? Witnesses? The police? Or is it the opinion of Kay Morrison, Harry Haydon and Jo Sayer whose by line is on the article? It’s not in part of the copy quoting witnesses, it dumped twix a Whitehall statement and a sentence about Theresa May convening Cobra (Cobra ffs. They know nothing of these two guys and one man is dead. They had a gun and knives. That is hardly a national emergency). No other major paper carries a statement like it.
How can anyone tell these guys are muslims? They’re certainly hiding their beards well, and those turban things muslims wear have had a major redesign lately.
Thank you The Sun, for helping me identify dangerous muslims. I must remember then, ordinary everyday clothes, equals muslim.
You may see a pattern here, but the Telegraph, Mail, Express and the Sun have no sign of this story as expected.
You won’t be shocked to find the Guardian has it, as does the Independent which, by the way, gets’ a gold star for pointing out more of Goves’ bullshit at the end.
What surprised me, although may not surprise you as I don’t read the paper, is the Mirror doesn’t feature it. I was under the impression the Mirror was a bit of a lefty paper and would’ve been pissing themselves laughing at Gove being called out on his shit-speak.
This is a prime opportunity for the opposition to tear strips out of Gove and try and get him to justify the unsubstantiated bollocks he uses to push through what he calls education ‘reforms’, and what anybody with half a clue as to what actually goes in a class room calls A Fucking Nightmare For All Involved.
It won’t fucking happen though, and Gove will be free to fuck things up by reforming the education system back into the shape it was in the 1950’s.
