Spurious campaign for silence

January 14th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

While browsing The Sun website for something to blog about (I try not to leave it all to Septicisle, honestly) I spotted this (istyosty link)…

FRIENDS of Jo want a national two-minute silence in her memory on January 31 at 6pm.

… and thought ‘eh? Really?’ I tried Googling and there are a couple of results but no links directly to the campiagn and the relevant results seem to be articles published today that have a variation of the above quote and a bit of a filler explaining who Jo Yeates is. Or was.

One result mentioned it is a Facebook campaign and after having a search on Facebook came up with nothing aswell. OK, I didn’t try very hard but I’d have thought putting ‘jo yeates 2 minutes silence campaign’ would’ve brought *something* up.

But anyway, 2 minutes silence. A national 2 minutes silence. Why?

I don’t meant to disrespect Jo, but why should there be a national 2 minutes silence for her? National silences are usually reserved for remembering stuff and people that has involved or had an effect on the nation. Like wars. Not for a single murder victim that no body had heard of before becoming famous in a such a tragic fashion.

Think I’m being harsh? Well, no I’m not.

We used to have one minute silences when I was a lad, and then, probably after Diana, Princess of Wales (to give her her proper title), I think, I crept up to 2 minutes and in the last couple of years 3 and 5 minutes have been bandied about. I think two minutes silence for Diana was two minutes too long, and she was the mother of our future king. She has had a little bit of an influence on Actually, probably not.

So, friends of Jo Yeates, if it is a real campaign, two things, 1) you’re probably better off usuing your energy on helping the police find Jos’ killer and 2) if you want to be slightly less disappointed with how may people observe a national two minutes silence in memory of Jo, you want to make your campaign a little easier to find. If it’s a Facebook campaign and I can’t even find it on Facebook, it’s just gonna be you guys silent on in a couple of Mondays time.

On the Default Retirement Age

January 13th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

Good news for the crumblies, then. The default retirement age (DRA) is to be scrapped.

This is A Good Thing, especially as the age at which the state pension can be claimed is going to be raised to 66, which could’ve left some people without an income for a year.

Some people aren’t happy about it though. Step forward the Institute of Directors.

The Directors reckon it will reduce flexibility for employers and want the plans clarified. As usual, ‘flexibility’ short hand for ‘ability to sack people’.

Why should this bother employers? The ability to sack people is there for employers already. There are procedures that have to be followed. Criteria filled. If someone ticks all the boxes then an employer has no comeback for sacking someone. Age, per se, should not come into it.

There is an arguement floating about that this change in the law is going to screw young people coming into the job market. Old, employed people equals young people with no jobs to get into.

First of all, why should someone move over, just give up or be forced to give up their job because someone else wants or needs it? A young person may need to get a job to get experience and skills and start moving up the corporate ladder (I seem to remember reading that the longer a ‘youth’ takes to get from education to employment the worse off they are with regards to their potential earnings, career progression and stuff like that). An older person has bills to pay, a pension to finish topping up, and other commitments. One persons need is no greater than anothers. No one has an automatic right to a job.

Secondly, the jobs that the older people would be leaving are not necessarily the same type that the young person would be taking. There would be something of a skills/knowledge gap.

There was also something in the news, and I can’t find it now about maybe increasing the period that an employer can dismiss a new employee for no reason from one year to two. Once again, all in the name of ‘flexibilty’.

Flexibility may be what the corporations want, and some would argue need, but what employees need is at least a bit of security. If an employer doesn’t know if someone is unsuitable for the position after a year then they probably shouldn’t be in a position offer employment in the first place.

It would be nice to have these directors think about the people they employ as people now and again, not just another resource they buy in like the stationary.

US State Department wants info on pretty much everyone on Twitter

January 12th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

From 21st Century Fix…

This, via Dave Winer, came my way this evening:

US subpoenas Twitter, seeking information on WikiLeaks’ 635,561 followers. http://r2.ly/6ixh

The article he links to can be found here:

A Dutch investigative journalist blasted the US Department of Justice for requesting information on everyone following WikiLeaks’ Twitter account and everyone they follow.

So this doesn’t only mean that I now potentially form part of a US government criminal investigation. It also means – if I’ve understood the slightly ambiguous phrase correctly – that if by any chance I decided to follow you on Twitter, you, as the recipient of the attentions of someone who also follows WikiLeaks, may just as easily find yourself the object of the attentions of some random US National Security official who – at some time in the future – will end up sticking his or her legalistic nose in your electronic communications, bank details, personal associations and cloud data.

But not because you yourself followed WikiLeaks. Simply because someone else who followed you also followed WikiLeaks.

On the privatised rail network

January 12th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

Alex Gabriel at Political Promise has a sort-of-rant about the trains. I’m not sure how accurate the figures are Alex uses but they sound about right…

If Arriva run the train you need and you’d rather travel with Virgin, tough. Unlike buying most other things, we don’t get to choose the superior brand. The companies aren’t really competing, either, because we have to travel with whichever one has trains at the right time. They might as well have the monopoly that the Conservatives promised they’d take from British Rail, because there’s no real choice of service involved: we board the train irrespective of how good or bad it is, or else we can’t make our journey.

The same applies to public transport in general. Fields, lakes and mountains surround my hometown, and when last I checked it cost £10 for the twenty minute journey to the next town. Long distance bus companies which compete for better prices will take you from Manchester to London for half that, but local companies – like rail firms – can be as exploitative as they like because people who use them have no choice.

They’re not accountable, efficient or cheap, but don’t the train companies at least strengthen the economy with their profits? Well, no. Salford University published a paper which found that in 2002-3, taxpayers paid subsidies of £1.34bn to prop up the rail industry. That’s right – we’re actually paying them to rip us off, and they wouldn’t be profitable if we didn’t.

When British Rail existed, it received £1.07bn of the same subsidies, so ironically train travel is more tax-funded now than then. National Rail even gets £20bn a year from general taxation to keep it going. The Thatcherites said not to fund unprofitable industries with public money, but that’s exactly the situation we’re in – except with all privatisation’s downsides and none of its benefits.

Sometimes there is no market and trying to create one just doesn’t work.

Daily Express and Daily Star now unregulated

January 12th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

As if you didn’t already know, but Northern and Shell, the publishers of Richard Desmonds media titles, has stopped paying its subscription to the Press Board of Finance (PressBof). As a result, they have been excluded from the self regulation system run by the PCC.

There’s enough comment about the blogosphere on it, but my post, written yesterday, is over at Expresswatch, if you’re interested.

Jack Straw and his big wooden shit-stirring spoon

January 8th, 2011 § 4 comments § permalink

Jack Straw is a fucking knobber, isn’t he?

Two blokes have been convicted of abusing girls. The girls are white and the men are from Pakistani origin so Jack Straw feels the need to shout about Pakistani men abusing ‘our’ girls…

Pakistanis, let’s be clear, are not the only people who commit sexual offences, and overwhelmingly the sex offenders’ wings of prisons are full of white sex offenders.

But there is a specific problem which involves Pakistani heritage men… who target vulnerable young white girls.

There is also a specific problem of psychos targeting prostitutes, husbands targeting wives, big kids targeting little kids, female school teachers targeting boy pupils. It’s just some people within one demographic going for people within another just because they are seen as weak or vulnerable.

We need to get the Pakistani community to think much more clearly about why this is going on and to be more open about the problems that are leading to a number of Pakistani heritage men thinking it is OK to target white girls in this way.

Look at that quote. It seems reasonable enough, but let’s do a classic word swap and see…

We need to get the White British community to think much more clearly about why this is going on and to be more open about the problems that are leading to a number of White British men thinking it is OK to target prostitutes in this way.

Sounds a bit stupid now, doesn’t it? Why should it be so, though? From the news I hear, the people that go on prostitute killing sprees are overwhelmingly white British. We don’t get anyone asking why or what are we, as a ‘community’, are gonna do about it?

Straw carries on…

These young men are in a western society, in any event, they act like any other young men, they’re fizzing and popping with testosterone, they want some outlet for that, but Pakistani heritage girls are off-limits and they are expected to marry a Pakistani girl from Pakistan, typically,

So they then seek other avenues and they see these young women, white girls who are vulnerable, some of them in care… who they think are easy meat.

Because they’re vulnerable they ply them with gifts, they give them drugs, and then of course they’re trapped.

Let’s break that quote down.
Young men ‘fizzing and popping with testosterone’ need to find an outlet. Girls of their own background are off limits. Being married into a similar culture, the idea that the girls are pure and sweet and don’t like getting drunk and stoned and having sex is laughable. The sweet innocent girls are, just like in the ‘western society’ a veneer for parents and elders.

Let’s take it at face value that Pakistani girls are off limits to these young men, why don’t these guys just date other girls? What’s wrong with that? The elders don’t have to know. There’s the old ‘just with her for the fuck’ reason to tell his mates.

Jack Straws comments make this case sound like these guys were just going for white girls because they felt they couldn’t pick up girls of their own culture or background. If that was the case they would’ve been picking up and shagging girls of a more appropriate age, not girls as young as twelve. They would probably have picked on any other subset of vulnerable girls as well, but being a predominately white country, vulnerable white girls are the most abundant.

These guys, in whatever culture, whatever society, are nasty bastards. As the judge of the case and the chief exec of Barnardos say, the race of the victims and abusers are coincidental.

The only reason Jack Straw is getting his big wooden racial shit stirring spoon out is because it’s brown people doing stuff to ‘our’ girls.

(Posted using my phone so, please, excuse the spelling)

On Nick Clegg scrapping control orders

January 7th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

The Deputy Prime Minister is going to scrap control orders… so we’re told…

The deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, today confirmed that the control order regime will be replaced by the coalition government, ending the “virtual house arrest” of terror suspects.

In a keynote London speech on civil liberties, Clegg said no final agreement had been reached by ministers on a replacement of the controversial control orders, which were introduced by the previous government.

Control orders are an abhorrent piece of legislation. They remove the right to a fair trial, they rely on a presumption of guilt, are a punishment for what someone might do rather than what one has done, they remove freedoms with no proof of any wrongdoing and are completely self-defeating.

They can be applied without a conviction because of what someone is saying or doing or who someone is associating with. To get a control order you don’t need to have done anything illegal, only to have done something that the state doesn’t like. I try not to invoke stuff like this, but it is truly Orwellian.

How one is supposed to go about getting a control order lifted I’ve no idea. How can you show that you’re voluntarily not going to do something unless given the chance not to do it?

If someone is suspected of plotting an illegal act, how does placing a control order help the situation? For a start, that person is given a heads up the the authorities are onto them. Secondly, the suspect may not carry out the act in the end. Wouldn’t it be better to let the suspect carry on and then when there is sufficient evidence to carry a prosecution, arrest them and then, well, prosecute them?

But Clegg isn’t going to get rid of control orders. He is only going to modify them…

While Clegg signalled that key elements would be reformed, he admitted that they would not be removed altogether because a “small number” of dangerous terror suspects could not be dealt with by the traditional justice system.

And these dangerous terror suspects were so dangerous that just going about their daily business was going to bring the country to it’s knees? These men may have their movements restricted and have a list of people they can’t talk to but if they are that dangerous, wouldn’t the counry be safer with them behind bars rather than out in public, albeit with certain restrictions?

How can someone not be dealt with by the traditional justice system? Why can anyone, no matter who, be labelled a criminal without actually having been found guilty of anything? Why not slap control orders on people to stop them talking to house burglars? After all one might get talking about various methods of house-breaking and it might give one ideas…

The only way to stop dangerous people is to put them on trial. How that is done, for example with intercept evidence, is another debate, but the fundamental right of a trial and innocent until proven guilty must be held onto. Like our life depends on it.

Modifying control orders is not enough. Nick Clegg needs to scrap them altogether.

Update: Robert Sharp at Liberal Conspiracy…

[control orders are] a rude and obvious short-circuit of the very basic legal principles. If a Minister ‘knows’ that someone is a danger, then they should be charged and convicted. If there is not enough evidence to convict, then neither politicians, the police nor the general public get to use the word ‘know’ in their rhetoric. There simply is not the epistemological certainty for that kind of claim, especially not in the context of political arguments. A control order is an extreme form of accusation, and Deputy Prime Ministers and Home Secretaries must not be allowed to make such ‘accusations’ and leave them hanging.

As the Home Secretary conducts her review of control orders in the coming months, look out for examples of this rhetoric, “we know, but we cannot convict.” It is a half-formed argument, a question not an answer. It is a cowardly fudge for those who do not want to make the tough decision: do we let these suspects go, or do we allow phone-tapping evidence to be admissable in court? This is the issue at stake, and the phenomenon of control orders is simply a clever device for punting the decision. If Nick Clegg is really serious about restoring civil liberties to British citizens, then he and his Prime Minister need to stop using bad rhetoric, and start making tough choices.

Get out of my bloody way!

January 5th, 2011 § 2 comments § permalink

I’m sorry to have another rant. I don’t intend to be all miserable and negative here, but fuck it. It’s my blog and I’m getting really pissed off about this. I have to say something before I pull some one over and ram their faux leather driving gloves down their fucking neck.

I want one of these on the front of my car:

The ideal car
(image originally from here)

I am sick to fucking death of going down a slip road, seeing some doddery old cunt in front potter along at 45mph with traffic screaming past me at 70+mph. I am sick to fucking death of having that ‘we’re going to die’ feeling every time I try to join dual carriageway or motorway.

I say old bastards, but these people that seem too fucking scared to use the loud pedal don’t seem to be old any more. Or women (why do some women, and it is only women, drive with their nose pressed up against the windscreen?). There’s still the slow old gits about but it’s not the exclusive domain of the old to be doddery anymore. Dodderyness, when it comes to driving seems to have been democratised. It is now the domain of, it seems, just about fucking anyone.

Cars in general, and especially modern cars, have good brakes. They stop quicker than they accelerate. So why do these fuckwits seem to think that it is ok to fuck off down the slip road slower than a dead frog and expect to be able to pull into traffic that is doing at least 25mph quicker than themselves? Why the fuck doesn’t it occur to them that if they get their fucking arses up to speed they will be able to fit into a smaller gap? Or that it’d be easier to slow down to slip in behind a lorry than to speed up to get in front of Mr BMW travelling at the speed of fucking light.

I want a spatula on the front of my car to flip these cunts, just like a burger, out of my way. Flip them into the grass verge where they explode in dramatic fiery ball of death. The end reslut needs to be this severe so it serves as a warning to people who are slow as fuck as to what happens when you, not necessarily don’t go quickly enough, but fucking dither about and don’t get out my fucking way.

DVDs: Grrr (a rant)

December 31st, 2010 § 3 comments § permalink

Rant time.

Right, film studios, distribution houses, or whoever the fuck puts DVDs together. Sort it fucking out, you cunts.

When I put a DVD in the machine I do not want to have to sit through upto quarter of and hour of shit just to get to the fucking film. I’ve bought the film, paid good fucking money for it, supported your overblown, whiney fucking company instead of those terrorist supporting, drug dealing, baby-eating pirates so LET ME SEE THE FUCKING FILM.

OK, you got the splash screen of Universals’ Earth, Disneys’ Cinderella castle or Paramounts mountain and (flying?) horse, which I’ll let you have, but then you get a fuck load of notices, which I can’t skip. What the fuck is wrong with you fuckers?

  1. The Copyright Notice
    I know it’s illegal to copy the fucking thing. I know it’s A Bad Thing to share the chuffing film over the internet. I FUCKING KNOW. I don’t need to be told everyfucking time I play the fucking movie. if I was going to do any of those things, is displaying a fucking notice really going to change my mind? No it’s not,so Fuck. Right. Off.
  2. The Anti-Piracy Promo Vid
    The same goes for this ‘funky’, ‘edgie’, ‘down-with-the-kids’ video that is supposed to make you realise that pirated DVDs pay the IRA or Al-Quada or make drug dealers money so they can buy drugs to sell to your children. Well, it too can fuck the fuck off. It’s camera work induced motion sickeness, the music might be ok of it was longer and had the chance to actuall be a porper tune, and your bolloxed of your face on ketamine, and tells people who already know you (usually) get shit quality films from pirated stuff that you (usually) get shit quality films on pirated stuff.
  3. The Commentary Disclaimer
    What the cunting fuck is the point of that Commentary Disclaimer? Whatever the director/actors/teaboy say on the disc is obviously not the film companies official line, otherwise they would have an Official Spokesman on there saying it. There is not going to be anything contentious in their commentary because the film companies lawyers have ok’d it before the DVD was released. If it must be there, LET ME FUCKING SKIP IT, you fuckers.
  4. Movie Trailers
    What is the point in putting trailer fo other films on a DVD? the only films that get put on there are either other high profile movies that i) I already know about and are going to buy or ignore the existence of or ii) unheard-of shit films that the film house need to shift more copies of that. I buy a DVD to wathc the main feature over and over again over the years. Five years down the line I still don’t want to be told that a shit film is great and I should buy, when after five years it will still be a shit film and I probably couldn’t buy it even if I did want to. At least the trailers are usually skippable but sometimes, and I’m looking at you Thomas and the Magic Railway, they’re not and it is a fucking ballache having to press a button on the remote an extra six or seven times to get past them.
  5. Animated Menus
    Yeah, yeah. Very nice. They were a thing of wonder when DVDs first appeared. ‘Ooh, look at that. You don’t get that with VHS.’ No, you didn’t. Unless you pressed pause/stop the video player just got the fuck on with it. I see the need for a menu, what with all the options like subtitles, but when I select an option just fucking do it. Don’t fuck about with swirling graphics and morphing. Get. On. With. It.
  6. A special mention for Disney Fast-Play
    Disney Fast-Play: Fuck. Off. Go on, get the fuck out. Disney Fast-Play is a big fucking lie. What do you think should happen when the Fast-Play feature appears? You get the choice of Main Menu or Fast play. Main Menu takes you where you expect, but the words ‘Fast-play’ must mean that the film will start even quicker. Yahoo! Excellent idea Disney. Cut the shit and get to the film. But no. Fast-Play does exactly the opposite. It plays tall the fucking adverts and trailers and then I don’t know because I don’t sit through the fucking thing.
    So even if you don’t get fooled into watching the trailers, it still takes longer to get to the fucking main menu than non-Disney DVDs because there is and extra menu in the fucking way. Well done Disney. I hope you’re fucking proud of yourself.

I feel better for that. Happy New Year, dear reader.

Vince Cable was biased, but so is Jeremy Hunt

December 23rd, 2010 § 0 comments § permalink

If Vince Cable, for expressing his opposition to the Murdoch take over of BSkyB, is unsuitable to decide whether it is appropriate or not, then surely Jeremy Hunt is as well.

Apart from privately meeting James Murdoch, Jeremy as openly said he has no objection to the deal. This statemnet might not be as inflamatory as Cables’ ‘war’, but still shows that he has preconceived ideas about it.

The business secretary is supposed to look at the reports/evidence or whatever and then make his mind up. Jeremy Hunt and Vince Cable are two sides of the same coin. Cable is coming at it from the side of opposition and would need a great deal of persuasion to approve the deal. Jeremy Hunt is coming at it from the other direction and would need persuadeing that it is a bad idea. Both are going to be influenced not just by whether this deal is good for the media as a whole and the plurity of the press but also by their chosen ideology, party pressure and of course, what they think the public want.

The business secretary is supposed to be ‘quasi-judicial’ in these cases, but just like the home secretary when it comes to reveiwing whether to release prisoners with a minimum sentence, they never could independent of party politics.

At least with an organisation like OFCOM/monopolies commission (or whoever it is) in this case, or a proper judge in the case of prisoners, there won’t be the consideration of trying to please the electorate, the party, lobbyists, businesses. With a non-political organisation looking at it a better decision can be made. Of course what that organisation is and how it’s put together is another discussion.

Personal bias will never be iradicated, but why add to it?

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