Sexism Sells Cheaper Car Insurance

European judges are expected to pass an equality ruling tomorrow that could cost British taxpayers almost £1billion.

They are poised to make it illegal to assess insurance premiums and pension payouts on the basis of a policyholder’s sex.
...
Female drivers under 26 would be the big losers, with some seeing premiums rise by 25 per cent at renewal. The premiums paid by young men will fall by around 10 per cent.

Pretty easy to understand why young men folk are becoming less gentile towards the fairer sex; it's court mandated.

Women, you have sought wholesale to put professional feministas on pedestals to speak for you; you didn't honestly think there would be no price did you?

And Now For Something Completely Local

Leeds' big three political parties have revealed details of their budgets for the city ahead of this afternoon's full council meeting.
Councillors will meet at Leeds Civic Hall this afternoon to debate the budget for 2011-2012. The council faces a £90m shortfall thanks to a £50m reduction in government grants and £40m as a result of rising cost pressures. The council is also having to identify further savings of at least £25m for the next financial year.
...
Councillor Keith Wakefield said the "unprecedented scale" of government cuts means that the council is unable to maintain services at current levels.
Wakefield has pledged to work "against the tide of financial pressures" to deliver a budget that prioritises and protects services for the most vulnerable people, as well as investing in jobs and skills, community safety and street cleansing.
Wakefield has also expressed disappointment that a cross-party approach to budget setting could not be secured.

In a nut shell in a city with going on a hundred private providers of cheap gyms and pools and a dozen or so private bus companies the councillors are bellyaching over a few leisure centres in deprived areas and a free bus service predominantly used by lazy students in walking distance of town.

One of the things I felt secured Leeds' public finances quite well was that no one party had an overwhelming majority of councillors through which to push an ideological agenda rather than what Leeds actually needs; the roads repaired, bins cleaned and mentally ill and incapacitated cared for.

Now it appears the situation has reverted to a more taut tightrope: 48 Labour + 2 Watermelons vs. a consortia of Lib Dems, Bory's & independents: putting a precarious left-leaning majority of 50:49.

Hence Labour have a lot of clout still, and presented with a change in the power structure they are making the cuts about frontline public services rather than cuts in the back offices strewn across Leeds (and believe me there are a lot of back offices with dubious responsibilities; I've worked for a few)

Might be a good idea to tip the balance of power away from the mainstream parties eh? LPUK are looking for locals wanting to do just that, to stand up to the wolves deciding which sheep to have for dinner.

We are not anti-public sector we are pro-individual rights to make contracts with whom we like without a third party; to provide public services only in so much as to cover the basic rights of man to go about his business and let the natural ingenuity and entrepreneurship of mankind provide the rest.

The collectivists call us cynical without knowing the meaning of the word; they bleat about our desire to shrink the state and raise their eyebrows at our desire to encourage private provision where public provision exists and then wonder why we laugh when their false dichotomy and belief in democracy doesn't provide the answers they want us to hear or be given.

If you feel as I do stand for your local seat; if you can't support someone who can - your area or not it is surely better to crush the consensus politics that have led us here than keep on with the status quo.

Again, Grow A Set Of Balls Lansley

More than 50,000 doctors, nurses, midwives and other NHS staff are due to lose their jobs, according to the most comprehensive survey of health cuts since the Government came to power.
...
And the University Hospital of North Staffordshire NHS Trust was reported to be forecasting a reduction of 1,349 full-time posts by 2015 - 22.5 per cent of its staff. A spokesman said that a “significant number” of employees were being relocated elsewhere.

Mr. Lansley can rest assured that each and everyone of these cut posts, like local government, will have a direct impact on frontline services.

The Bory's and their associated Lib Dumb bell-clappers* have unfortunately been treated like mugs and chosen to fight Labour and the civil disservice on their choice of battle field; they didn't realise the narrative had been hijacked, changed from "service reform" to "service cuts".

And as the good Dr. North pointed out last week, both inflections of language and meaning here carry responsibilities, the former meaning you have to take command on behalf of taxpayers as to where the axe will fall, the latter passing the axe to those who should be getting cut.

If proof were needed to this check out this job, one of only 5 available for North Staffordshire NHS Trust:

Mystery Shopper Programme Manager (£30,460 to £40,157 pa)
Organisation Development
Posted: 14/02/2011
North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare NHS Trust
Mystery Shopping is a customer feedback tool, more commonly used in the commercial sector which is now attracting growing attention in healthcare environments. Funded by the Workforce Locality Board, for a period of 12 months, the Programme Manager: Mystery Shopper provides an exciting opportunity for a forward thinking, enthusiastic individual to develop and implement Mystery Shopping across NHS partner organisations...

Mystery shopping being a contradiction in terms when there is a sole supplier of healthcare, so what is the point of even pretending?

Ah, you say, service improvement, to which I cynically point out that the trusts' gets paid whether your happy or not, improvements interpreted as to mean "more money" or "more resources" to be squirrelled away by management consultants and diversity coordinators.

Or I could point out that there are private companies that do marketing research for a fraction of the price, by company utilising just such groups to do this.

So are we likely to see a set of balls descend amongst any of the coalition anytime soon?

I wont be holding my breath.

* = that little bit of poo that dangles down at the end of a bog session, probably after big steak, pasta, and 3 cups of coffee.

Fill Yer Boots #2

Cameron answers our questions? Gonna be thinking long and hard about this one.

Still there are lot of things I'd like to see him try to worm his way out of.

So, fill your boots.

UPDATE

Have given my question in for your consideration, using my twitter username, tjerubbaal, if you like it vote for it.

Some brilliant gems so far:

"How will Britain increase the value of exports over imports after the economic downturn?"

Um I have a very complicated answer to this but will just ask it as a 5 year-old would: "if what we get from other countries is worth more than we give to them that means we win right?"

"hello my name is teoni my question is why is pollution in the air"

Not really worth an answer is it? Euroslime Dave is a politician, not an environment scientist.

"Are you a member of the global elitist Builderburg group and what are your views on the new word order"

Please change the f*****g record; our political masters are all Oxbridge multi-millionaires and couldn't find their arse with both hands - what makes you think these shadowy types are any better at keeping the conspiracies secret and successful?

Personally though I am loving this question:

"Where is your chin, and are you the nexr doctor after Matt Smith?"

Got my vote

The Clock Is Ticking

Following my last call for Euroslime Dave to tell the Strasbourg/Brussels consensus to piss off, comes this potential political IED:

Murderers and rapists locked up in psychiatric hospitals are challenging the British Government in a test case at the European Court of Human Rights which could see them win full State benefits.

The case will intensify pressure on David Cameron, after the Prime Minister pledged to review Strasbourg's influence on British law following the row over whether prisoners should have the vote.

The prisoners' votes issue was a ruse, as the Synonblog pointed out; a means for the CINO* Euroslime Dave to tickle faux-euroskeptic ears in the CINO* party and the real ones belonging to the swivel-eyed loons reading the The Daily Fail.

Now it looks increasingly like the unnaccountable, unelected ECHR will be testing how far there powers can take them, which is looking increasingly likely to be anywhere, tramping over the elected scum currently asleep at the wheel in our parliament of whores.

* = Conservative In Name Only

Isn't This A Good Thing?

Mr Diamond explained in his letter that the amount of corporation tax paid by Barclays was a result of it being able to reduce its bill due to "UK losses brought forward principally arising from credit write downs".

Most of these credit writedowns are understood to be related to losses Barclays made on holdings of US sub-prime debt securities that crashed in value.

Under UK tax law, companies incorporated in Britain are legitimately allowed to write off losses against their tax bill.

Without even getting into the moral or ethical issues surrounding whether there is any legitimacy in calling for corporation tax (remember: all you are doing when claiming tax of a legal persons is depreciating real wages for real people working for "them") there is something for all those #ukuncut idiots to consider.

What Barclays have done is absorbed the difference in value created by the property bubble and credit crunch into their taxable income and profits; in effect detoxifying the debt.

They have done this through a legal tax-reduction method that behaves like a tax cut which improves profitability whilst simultaneously removing some dangerous inflationary credit from the system.

All this shows is:

1. That tax-cuts, convoluted or direct, promote growth & profitability.
2. Tax-cuts detoxify debt by removing false price signals from a market.

And this is a bad thing?

Quote Of The Day

But then, I've never been much taken with the myth of "military efficiency" - how those two words ever came to be linked is an ongoing mystery. Like every bureaucracy, there is good and bad, and that is what the Army is, first and foremost, a bureaucracy. Unfortunately, in my long and less than illustrious career, I have found that there is one constant in life: a bureaucracy is a means by which good men do evil.

The good Dr. North talking about a wronged man in an ocean of wronged men.

Letting People Down Roughly

Baby boomers should be prepared to fund their own care in old age because their generation has done ‘pretty well for itself’, a Government adviser said yesterday.
Lord Warner, a former Labour health minister who is drafting reforms on the future of elderly care, said that far more people born in the ‘baby boom’ years after the Second World War owned their own home than previous generations – and many of these properties were worth a lot of money.

In my days avoiding the dole line not long in the dim distant past I worked for a benefits unit for Leeds City Council; their job was to maximise the benefit package available to vulnerable groups: the elderly, the chronically poor and the invalid, and to ascertain if the richest amongst the groups could afford to pay towards the cost of their care.

It was alway fun to hear the stories; the incredulous, aghast faces on the little Lord Fontelroy's after you told them that they would be expected to pay the maximum rate to their still-subsidised care (note the emboldened word), the joy of an aged lollypop lady widowed with nothing finding she wouldn't be expected to pay anything at all.

Or anger at those gaming the system; a millionaire who signed over power of attorney and all assets to his son who then charged his father rent in order to claim housing benefit, paying for his holiday in the Mauritius or a down payment on a holiday home in the dales no doubt, or the old housewife left her family home by a late, sorely missed husband, with rapidly dissolving, scant savings who would be liable for massive unaffordable payouts.

You could easily say that the subsidised scheme was illiberal, an imposition on today's taxpayers paying for the previous generations mistakes, and you would be right.

But right doesn't wipe old ladies bottoms, feed geriatrics or break the day-on-day tedium with a visit to a recreation centre.

Nor does right fight the regulatory impacts on these services killing off any chance of seeing them get cheaper or the burden on others reduce. How every terrible happening prompts political axes to the grindstone making the process of looking after our burgeoning elderly population more cumbersome and expensive.

No; wrong has prevailed too long and now one generation must make a sacrifice for another - it has not be unreasonable for the elderly to expect to keep their homes and have their care paid or; they were told and promised as much by previous governments who knew they could promise jam tomorrow without ever having to worry about it's cost.

However it falls the translation will impact the old and the new together; there really is no alternative now. One generation will have to make sacrifices bigger than any other, will have to realise there is no jam tomorrow; the vast corporatist state's ponzi schemes has squirrelled it all away for itself and it's own benefit.

That sacrifice will see reward though; it will follow the mass realisation that we are not our collective brothers' keepers and that self-reliance, eroded by so much over-reliance on an all-powerful state will reappear with a vengeance.

And it will accompany the greatest uprising against this present darkness ever seen.

That or we can wind our way to slow painful decline as civilisations have done before.

Flagrant Advertising #1: Nintendo 3DS

Sweet.

Being an avid gamer I attract a lot of interest from gamers and advertisers of games and gaming systems. This is one such advert.

I've had them all: Nintendo, Playstation, Xbox...all through the generations, all through the platforms and play areas at home or abroad.

This, however looks likely to dominate the out an about market:

Sharing propelled by Wikio

Very very excited.

P.S. If Nintendo or Ebuzzing would like a playtester out in the field will happily oblige!

This Is Why You Don't Leave Cuts To Those In Line For The Chop

Dr. Fox: Hard at work or hardly working?

The Ministry of Defence has apologised after a reported 38 soldiers - including one serving on the Afghan front line - were sacked by email.

The troops, all of whom are warrant officers, were told they were being dismissed as ‘the Army has to make significant cutbacks’.

I've said it before and I'll say it again; Team Cambo could do worse than fire the top 5 layers of the civil service and then instruct real reforms rather than kick this particular poo-ball into the long grass.

Noone likes a coward Liam and Dave; still, people like Disingenuous shits even less:

But shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy said the soldiers had been treated in a 'callous, cold-hearted, soulless' way and called on Government ministers to take responsibility for the incident.
Mr Murphy told the Today programme: 'We can't halt every redundancy in the Armed Forces, but this is no way to treat men and women who have served their country fearlessly for so many years.

Lest we forget, Murphy was the Minister for Europe, overseeing the biggest transfer of powers and money to the vast QuANGO that is the European commission and the empowerment act known as the Lisbon Treaty; essentially running interference while the EU takes control.

So now when £10Bn is to be wasted on an unnecessary waste policy while our Air Force, our Navy and our Army are expected to fight wars with little more than an active imagination.

Ye' gods.

The End of Armani-dinner-jacket?

Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Iran today, hoping to emulate the popular uprising in Egypt in a bold move which prompted a violent crackdown by security services.

The streets were flooded with police and militia as the hardline regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sought to prevent marches in support of Egypt's pro-democracy movement becoming demonstrations against the government.

Greater scholars than myself will tell you the situation in Iran is vastly different to t'Egypt; for one thing the armed forces will probably not be turning against the Ayatollah nor the Islamic councils and thus against their political puppet, Armani-dinner-jacket.

Still, fingers crossed aye? Worse thing Israel or the Western world could do would be to stick powerful 3G transmitters on the Iranian borders; despots know if you want to win a war of attrition like this you cut off communication.

Thin End Of The Wedge?

I was in Church this morning when one of our older members mentioned the following story in a particularly worried tone:

Ministers are expected to publish plans to enable same-sex couples to "marry" in church, the BBC has learned.

Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone is to propose lifting the ban on civil partnerships taking place in religious settings in England and Wales.

There are no plans to compel religious organisations to hold ceremonies and the Church of England has said it would not allow its churches to be used.

Further to this assault on liberty I could agree with the apprehension.

But, as is suggested by Karthik Reddy at the Adam Smith Blog, all it really represents is an equalisation in the eyes of the law for anyone making a social contract.

We are starting from a running block which saw homosexuality banned and practitioners jailed; you don't have to be pro-gay or like the act itself to realise this is. A. Bad. Thing.

And it's a good thing that their is greater equality; however, the worry is still there that because this doesn't deal with the underlying problem - law where none need exist - in such cases the scales of justice inevitably fall in the opposite direction under the momentum of good intentions; how long will it be before a homosexual couple take umbridge at a church telling them to piss off, it's not biblical to marry them, and find themselves facing a hefty fine?

Do we really believe this won't be tried?

Then May I Suggest That You Tell Them Politely To Bugger Off

The government says it has to end the ban on inmates voting, or face being sued for tens of millions of pounds.

Then can I firmly suggest, Coalition Masters, that you tell them to whistle for it.

After all, what are they gonna do - arrest us?

My Growth Agenda: Keep The State Busy Doing Nothing

Dr. Butler has been discussing "growth" with our lords and masters; apparently it didn't go too well:

I had one of those depressing meetings with government folk the other day, this one on growth. It started well enough, talking about the need for deregulation, competition policy, and the burden of employment law. The trouble is, though, that deregulation has been found too difficult. Nick Clegg's intended repeal of outdated laws has been put in a drawer because there's too much outdated law for him to get his head round, while Francis Maude's proposed bonfire of the quango is a damp squib. And as for employment law, well, much of it comes from the EU, and the rest is stuff that is easy to create but not easy to repeal, since all such laws build up dependency groups.

Perhaps I go beyond myself in saying this but in all likelihood this meeting was probably a way of satiating calls from the more traditional Thatcherites amongst the conservative right: 'Nick Clegg's people are talking to the ASI about ways to encourage growth' becoming a widely reported meme to the Torygraph and Fail, without the content or the extent of his success in convincing leviathan to cut itself down to size ever entering the popular discourse.

Now I know Dr. Butler isn't that daft to be taken for a ride and his very post illustrates how he won't let it lie but I'm starting to wonder if the answer to this problem shouldn't stem from creating more laws; starting with one very simple one in particular, preferably given some constitutional weight to it.

The law I am off course talking about is one designed to introduce sunshine clauses, both retrospectively and for all future laws and treaties; all existing laws and statutes must be debated and cleared by both houses before the end of this particular parliament and all new legislation will be reviewed in 2 parliaments time; any law not debated in this period will then cease to be a constituent of British law and attempts to uphold it could he challenged in court, with a view to all challenges being upheld as the law no longer applies.

The pressure and honus would then be on this current parliament to prove the usefulness of current laws and ease the burden of new lawmaking being a referential process to older faultier laws; likewise it would ensure the law is adaptive to the environment it finds itself in.

A side effect would be to ensure fewer laws come into effect from illiberal statutory instruments and by association from the EU without first concentrating the minds of our politicos on it's impact and synergy with our own common law system, as successive SIs rely on their power and enforceability through consent to previous law.

Ultimately it puts what our politicos minds on their collective sleeves; the Cleggeron rode in on a wave of liberal conservatism saying they were going to restore the supremacy of the individual over the collective, roll back state encroachment on our personal freedoms and through a lot of deceptive rhetoric have managed to carry on doing exactly the same thing as their predecessors; more laws, more gloss, state engorgement on more freedoms and noone really in charge other than an incumbent, unelected EU bureaucracy.

Let's see them back this up with a reform that will see actions rather than rhetoric.

A Victory For Freedom?

It will become a criminal offence to clamp cars on private land, putting rogue firms out of business, under a ‘Freedoms Bill’ to be introduced in Parliament in the next few days.

So it'll now become a crime to stop people using your land to park on. YOUR land?

Now I can get behind calls for greater transparency in advertising clamping spots and fine amounts; heck I'd even support harsher penalties up to bankrupting clamping companies who flaunt these rules and go about using the drivers ignorance to obscured rules about the use of the parking area.

What I can't get behind is the top down blanket ban on self-determination and diktat on the use of your private property for exactly the same reasons that I don't support tax for taxes' sake; that the government may earn a little revenue from something seems to be an excuse I'm seeing all the more regularly and it is repugnant in the extreme.

This is sorely the wrong way to go in what should otherwise be quite a hood bit of legislation.

I hope.

Quote of the Day: One For You @minibus_paul

Social justice theory rationalizes covetousness, theft, and bitterness. This anti-Christian ideology turns eternal moral principles upside down.

From the following article, borrowed liberally from here.

This Week I've Mostly Been Playing... (part 2)

...Read Dead Redemption



In a sporadic, spume of consciousness kind of weekly series about what I am doing to feign off boredom and donate my time to something other than filling Osbourne's swag bag, I hereby talk about the awesomeness that is Red Dead Redemption.

It's actually a bit of a lie; ive mostly been killing 12 years olds who's parents had no problem buying them Call of Duty: Black Ops for Christmas. But as this would be a very short lived series if I did a weekly and it was proportionally based on my playing habits.




So all that said Red Dead is the focus.

Set in a rapidly changing old west you are John Marston; thrust back into your old life of gun slinging and cowboying you've been blackmailed by a government agency holding your family captive into hunting down your old gang and bringing them to justice.

You achieve this by entering what must be one of the most open-ended universes yet in a Rockstar game; not quite on the same par with Bethesda's Fallout 3 or The Elder Scrolls but definitely as inviting an arena as any.

What is striking is how the environment interacts with you; I spent several hours navigating a particularly hostile area of land fighting off bears and bandits alike - other more gentile appearing areas can suddenly erupt into gang warfare, dragging you in.

What is most striking about it above all is the storyline: the twists and turns take you through stirring up revolutionary uprisings in Mexico to quelling the same amongst Native Americans in the old west, all the while weaved into a story of loss and redemption mingles with a lot of anti-government sentiment.

Overall this is one of the best games of last year, featuring mountains of versatility if your willing to step outside of the main storyline for a minute.

Score: I'd be willing to part with £25 for it still.

Quote Of The Day

"Anyone with good intentions is the traitor because being evil is the norm."

- Wael Ghonim, a Google marketing executive behind a Facebook page widely credited with starting the Egyptian protests.

Treason

Wasn't there a time when this would be considered high treason?

A definition:

High treason is criminal disloyalty to one's government. Participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplomats, or its secret services for a hostile and foreign power, or attempting to kill its head of state are perhaps the best known examples of high treason. High treason requires that the alleged traitor have obligations of loyalty in the state he or she betrayed, such as citizenship, although presence in the state at the time is sufficient.

Now whether you believe Al-Megrahi is guilty or not the fact remains that the Scottish and UK government conspired to have a convicted mass murderer of British nationals released on behalf of a foreign state power.

Now, they may not hang you for this any longer but suffice it to say Brown, Blair, Mandelson and Macaskill should all be put away for a very long time.

Isn't This A Stronger Arguement To Abolish The Minimum Wage?

The Prince’s Trust and other charities will set up stalls in Jobcentre Plus offices after agreeing a deal to be rubber-stamped by ministers today.

The move comes after youth unemployment leapt by 32,000 to 951,000 in November – its highest since records began in 1992.

Critics said the scheme could merely ‘massage’ jobless statistics while distracting from the creation of muchneeded new jobs for young people. Britain’s jobless total is 2.5million – an unemployment rate of 7.9 per cent, rising to 20.3 per cent among those aged 16 to 24.

Currently people have 2 choices at the lower end of the job market.

They either vie for a toilet cleaning or pot washing or some other menial job paying ~£5.80 an hour or they stick on the dole and do nothing, replete with all bills paid in the process.

IDS is trying to get the latter to do the former for free, as paying half the above amount

So why can't their be some happier medium? Say like a negative income tax scheme, or better yet to avoid those eeeville capitalists taskmasters from taking advantage of the good graces of a benevolent state (sarcasm aside - Ed) why not this?.

More Telling Than He Probably Realised

David Cameron has ruled out 'significant' tax cuts while the Government is cutting spending to reduce the deficit.
...
But Mr Cameron insisted there was no 'Plan B' on the coalition's deficit-reduction strategy and said tax cuts would only undo the work of painful curbs in public spending.

"Curbs" not cuts - the difference should be noted in his phrasing.

I happen to agree with Mr. Cameron; deficit reduction is now effectively a tax on our children and grandchildren - inter-generational state terrorism if you will - we should put the 11% overspending down; that should have been a non-negotiable start and done this year.

The Fabian left and Progressively Labourious would no doubt argue that a vast proportion of the present deficit was due to the bank bailout - and they would be right.

However, when state spending has reached an unjustifiable, nigh on 50% theft of total GDP slowly decoupling banking liabilities makes for a very useful start to cutting the overall tax take.

For a start.

Question For Those In The Know

Further to my post earlier today, Mr. Tebboth has directed me to this Private Members Bill from last year and I noticed this:

This Bill will be on the Order Paper for a Second Reading debate on 30 March 2012, although the House is not expected to sit on this day.

From a bill put forward 5 July 2010; is this what is known as "kicking it into the long grass" or are our MPs really that busy discussing other matters?

Beggars belief.

Self Control's The Way To Go

That, or we start handing these out at chemists.

I once went to University and studied chemistry which I enjoyed, but quite frankly, was rubbish at; where you to ask me about some deeply complex chemistry theorem I would most likely look agog at you.

Despite this a fine blend of hubris, ego and lack of self-awareness (or honesty perhaps?) led to me taking my 2:1 Masters degree as evidence I was capable of a PhD; I was to move onto asking new questions rather than answering older ones.

Whether this would have proved I was the idiot I know I am now or not will never be answered, because it was during my first year that my parents teetering marriage finally went overboard and my entire family went mental (a story for another time), not least myself , newly married being unable to cope with becoming father (I'm the eldest) to my siblings whilst the original buggered off to mid-life crisistania whilst Mumra took off to De-Nileism.

Why am I telling you all this? Because, fearless reader I believe there is some relationship between what is happening in scientific "research" today in many fields and how my family behaved (behaves).

Lately science has become less about discovering new things and more about avoiding tricky questions that challenge old rules; my folks tried this for years to everyones detriment and it was once reality finally settled in that things that could've been cordial and polite became destructive and heartbreaking.

This looks like one of those questions scientists have been trying to avoid:

The drive to give free morning-after pills to teenage girls has failed to cut underage pregnancies.
Schemes to offer over-the-counter emergency birth control to girls under 16 have simply encouraged youngsters to have more unprotected sex, damning research found.
In doing so they have fuelled a rise in sexually transmitted diseases.
The findings are a blow to public health chiefs who have argued that handing out the morning-after pill cuts schoolgirl pregnancies.
Family campaigners seized on the research as more evidence that the problem of teenage pregnancies needs a ‘moral solution’ and not one based on dishing out drugs.

Now trying to at least retain some vestige of the scientist within
I decided you use some academic contacts to get a copy of the unreleased paper; this was a Fairly Pale story afterall, only to find that the authors had tried their hardest to back up their claims with several layers of statistical formulae - none of which really detracted from the overall picture the results painted; the evidence may not be on a par with truly empirical observation due to the small numbers involved, but it is compelling.

And it makes sense; people respond to incentives and if you offer them the opportunity to experience something in a little more pleasurable a manner to which the uninformed (or, if Dwayne really was lying to you and did sleep with the town bike, Dwaynerita, the lied to) see as having little cost associated with the action but to take 10 minutes out of their Trisha and Jeremy Kyle watching and pop down to the chemist's.

Knowing several teenage single mums I can see why the results are not as black and white as the Fail would wish (if not for their desire to beef up the rhetoric in the article mind); some rise to the challenge of parenthood admirably and make good with their lot - others not so much. How these 2 groups measure up is beyond me and I will leave it to Proffessor Paton, his group and others to ascertain.

One thing I am convinced of; these children ultimately have no father; they are the States progeny - having torn out the heart of personal responsibility by effectively subsidising baby-making they are now reaping all the unintended consequences.

And once one uncomfortable question is asked, the rest come tumbling out.

No Mr. Raab; MP's Are Out Of Control - Ours.

European judges have turned Britain into a ‘safe haven’ for foreign terrorists, the independent reviewer of anti-terror laws warned yesterday.
Lord Carlile said rulings by the European Court of Human Rights had undermined efforts to deport dangerous individuals intent on causing mayhem.
...
Last night Dominic Raab, Tory MP for Esher and Walton, said European judges’ law making was ‘out of control’.
He added: ‘It is not the job of an international court to re-write British laws on deportation, parental discipline or prisoner voting. It is high time we drew a line in the sand.’

But it is their job; the Westminster clique abandoned it's primary function - to make and amend law as the need arose - to technocrats, QUANGOs and the EU; the result has been empowerment of the unelected chattering classes, the professional lawyer and the politician who chooses soundbites over substance and the resultant levels of debt, public service stagnation in all but price and crony capitalist bailouts.

You've had well over thirty years to reverse these decisions at any point; an amendment tabled to the 1972 European Communities Act and democratic judicial reform at the UK level would make most judges think long and hard before making an unpopular decision like votes for rapists or pool tables for murderers.

So no more Mr. Raab, you did this by not challenging the status quo; you forget where power comes from - us.

On A Lighter But Still Important Note...

Aunty Beeb is reporting yet another group of malcontents moaning they won't be sucking at the government teat anymore:

More than two-thirds of councils in England are planning major cuts to their bus budgets, it is claimed.

According to the Campaign for Better Transport, which is launching the Save our Buses campaign, some councils intend to end all subsidised services.

The Local Government Association also warned many bus routes would disappear as a result of government cutbacks.

Unfortunately matey what we are seeing here is the realisation of risks and cost of living in isolated areas; the cost can no longer be mitigated against hard pressed groups in urban areas as they are already squeezed from elsewhere - the crunch has put paid to that idea.

Still, you might want to ask about the way bus services are regulated cross-country, or how councils dictate the route and timings in many cases, leading to skewed incentives; same thing goes for National(ised) Rail and train providers.

Deal with these problems of provision, freeing people up to plan the best routes possible and the timing they can afford and see this situation change; even in poor countries we see the markets finding solutions to these issues.

Enraged.

Were it not for traffic I woul have undoubtedly arrived at work in tears and with a murderous gleam in my eye:

A baby was found dead in his pushchair in front of a blazing gas fire – his body charred and burned – after social services missed 17 chances to save him.

Alex Sutherland, aged 13 months, had been dead for at least three days, according to a harrowing report published yesterday.

You need not read any more than that; the horror was almost too much for me this morning , I dare not share it with Mrs. Tomrat.

What is wrong with people? I see the exact same destructive tendencies in some of the "families" our youth group belong to - it is an abuse of the word in many cases, with the occasional heartening case where families are simply doing everything they can with the little they have.

He said there was a lack of communication and joined-up working between agencies and he highlighted problems, with under-trained social workers and a ‘tick box’ mentality.
...
‘No single agency was responsible for failing to protect Child T from the chronic neglect which he suffered at the hands of his mother, but rather he was the victim of the multiple failures of all those agencies … to recognise the risks to which he was exposed and to take appropriate action.’
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Pauline Newman, the city council’s director of Children’s Services, said it was clear ‘there were areas where we could have done better’.

She added: ‘We have carried out an extensive programme of work since this little boy died to ensure that staff fully understand the lessons that need to be taken on board from this tragedy.’

I'm not trying to absolve the mother of her horrible crime which should see her in jail for much longer than she has been given, but isn't the "lessons are being learned" excuse just getting a little tired? In a personal capacity I see this exact same 'horse:bolted' attitude throughout the social services almost as much as I do in the papers and it wore thin some 30 excuses ago.

You want some real lessons learned? Amend the Childrens Act and related documents so that it doesn't protect the authorities, only the families involved; injustices like this don't help the cause of child welfare when the state is happy to challenge unconventional lifestyle choices but not the destructive ones of their own creation.

Immediately fire every social worker, child protection bod and anyone else involved in social services or is a member of one of these myriad organisations who never seem to be directly responsible for any of these events but are learning a lot from them in what must surely be a cross between car crash television and an open university show and immediately fold them and all-comers into one agency; the police - form a specialist group within a publicly accountable, elected chief-led, police service to deal with this with police powers; at worst no one can mitigate the blame for such events across the old, lame "no one agency was to blame" excuse; I'm sure in this age of austerity the co-attrition would be happy to save the cash on executive jobsworths' in multiple social services.

Finally recognise that these abuses occur, by and large, by families fathered by the state; they consist predominantly of groups who treat their kids like proverbial meal tickets and derive their economic and social activity directly from the state, and the sins of the father, it's abuses and it's lawlessness is rubbing off; removing people wholesale from the states coat tails and forcing them to take care of themselves would be a good place to start - perhaps here.

None of this will stop bad parenting; only bad parents can stop this, but ye gods is it really so much to ask that when the state dips it oar unto every aspect of our lives it takes some flaming responsibility for the fallout?