Killing Aunty Beeb

Gawd bless my lil Sis; convinced her to get me a subscription to Reason magazine for my birthday and she pulls through (a little over 6 months late but who's counting.

Anyway a brilliant column on the makeup of new agencies and how this correlates with the behaviour of the host state:

In a paper published in the spring issue of the journal Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, Pal analyzed data from 98 countries. Her goal: to see if there were statistically significant correlations between press freedom and seven measures of instability, including ethnic tensions, external and internal conflicts, crime and disorder, military participation in government, and religious tensions. An increase in press freedom, she concluded, reduces all seven measures of instability. (emphasis mine)

Now I think we are far from being able to say explicitly that one causes the other; more likely there are synergies at play that won't show up on an initial analysis but the results are compelling: greater press freedom skews attempts at government at closing down alternative lines of debate (why I feel the internet is so important and rightly feared by our current political elites).

This is particularly interesting though:

Pal also noted that state ownership of media is associated with higher corruption, weaker civil liberties, insecure property rights, lower education and life expectancies, and higher infant mortality and malnutrition.

And yes I realise that Aunty Beeb is not technically state owned, but it does derive it's powers of coercion from the state so will be less likely to bite the hand that feeds it (nibble mildly in the case of the Squandervative coalition maybe, but only because they lack the prerequisite spine to do anything about it).

Worth a try killing the Beeb in any case though eh?

If 6 Were 9

Remember back when the coalition still hadn't markedly pissed off anyone? You know it was sometime in October/November; Osbo had just told us all calmly that DROSSTRAP would be the order of the day - the brakes going on for getting more indebted, with a view to a second term setting a plan to handle all those IOUs under the carpet - Zippy as business secretary was chatting up journalists and briefing against businesses his lefty constituents didn't particularly like; Cameron courageously and heroically arguing down the amount of our government money handed over to an increasing EU budget in this new age of austerity.

This last point, Cameron's first of many backtracks on the EU, thus tune being to push for a halt in it's budget or potentially a decrease, led to a 2.9% increase: equating to roughly £440 million extra in our contribution.

Man, those were the days weren't they?

So what has this budgetary increase now become?

[EU budget increase: £0.45Bn] + [Irish Bailout: £7Bn] + [Portugese bailout: £6Bn] = £13.45 BILLION in additional money's going to the Eurozone.

If £0.45Bn = 2.9% increase that equates to £0.225Bn per 1%; therefore £13.45Bn/£0.225Bn = a 59.77% increase in our net EU contributions.

Looked at another way the average cost of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning "Joint Strike fighter" - those jets we have had to cut the majority of our order of to make up budget cuts - come in based on the Wikipedia pages' figure at about £85 Million a piece.

So we've just given up a potential 158 brand spanking new and shiny fighter jets bailing out the unaccountble Eurozone colleagues an their ambitions for a single currency.

You still glad we got "cast-iron Dave" at the helm? More like pig iron; will crumble at the slightest hint of pressure onto a bed of taxpayers money.

Angry At The Wrong People

Fuel prices have fallen since the Budget, but by less than the 1p cut in duty announced by Chancellor George Osborne, UK-wide research has found.

There was a 0.6p average fall in petrol and diesel from Wednesday to Thursday, the survey by Experian Catalist found.

The 1p cut in duty on petrol and diesel took effect from 1800 GMT on Wednesday.

The Retail Motor Industry Federation (RMI) says many garages will delay implementing the cut until stocks of existing, more expensive fuel are gone.

Aunty Beeb getting mad at those evil capitalist bastards not passing on the whole penny of duty our glorious leaders deigned to bequeath us in an act of infinite grace and generosity

And how much was this value?




Based on the above forecast you get the following percentages:

-57.19p duty = 47.7%
-39.85p product = 33.2%
-17.86p VAT = 14.9%
- 5p delivery & retail = 4.2%

Or to put another way 62.2% of the cost of fuel goes into George Osbourne's pockets.

4.2%.

Vs.

62.2%.

That poor chap who gets your late night beer & rizla run order on your way home walking from town takes just 4p from every £1 you spend on fuel through the week; the government takes 60-bloody pence and positively conflates many of the conflicts that are driving the price skyward.

Aunty Beeb should be ashamed of herself.

Please Lord Let This Be The Straw

The gay couple who won damages from Christian hotel owners for refusing them a bed are suing to get even more money from them, according to documents filed at the Court of Appeal.

Steven Preddy and Martyn Hall said the owners were let off too lightly because of their Christian beliefs.

Peter and Hazelmary Bull now face having to pay the couple thousands of pounds more in compensation.

Civil partners Mr Preddy, 38, and Mr Hall, 46, of Bristol, won their case in January and were awarded £1,800 each.

Their legal challenge to the amount of damages is being backed and fully financed by the taxpayer-funded Equality and Human Rights Commission, according to the documents.

The move led yesterday to fresh protests that the might of the State is being used to sweep away any remaining claim Christianity has to a hearing in the courts.

Mr and Mrs Bull, who run the Chymorvah Hotel in their seven-bedroom home in Cornwall, had turned away the men on the grounds that their policy is to let double rooms only to married couples.

In January Judge Andrew Rutherford, at Bristol County Court, ruled that the Bulls had broken sexual orientation regulations under the Equality Act, because in the eyes of the law civil partnership is the same as marriage.

My prayer this morning in light of this:

Lord God I know all things work together for your glory and good; forgive me when I question this truth in the face of so much darkness.

Thank you God that you have revealed to me so much already, so as to not fear when persecution comes to my door; thank you more so that we in the west are so lightly touched by the enemy in this regard.

And God please continue to use your enemies in this way as to reveal the contradiction present in our present darkness; that the state is not our friend nor the last vestige of the rule of law any longer, but merely an agent if legalised violence, captured by pressure groups intent on spreading it's cancerous power.

Lord whom you wish to destroy you must first turn mad or to your light; let this be an example of the former so the many of us asleep in your light awaken.

Most of all help me to know you more in these times of trouble.

Amen.

Note: This is an excellent dissertation on what I believe is really going on here.

Their Contempt For You Is Absolute #2

David Cameron has been secretly consulting Tony Blair about Libya despite publicly criticising his links with Colonel Gaddafi.

Senior officials say the Prime Minister has held at least two conversations in the past fortnight with the former Labour premier, now a Middle East peace envoy.

Mr Cameron has consulted Mr Blair about the Libyan dictator’s state of mind and sought advice about how to make him quit.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1362345/David-Camerons-secret-Libya-crisis-talks-Tony-Blair.html
still does these shady dealings with the opposition- with men who's actions were criminal before you even start to talk about the legitimacy of their actions with things like Iraq.

The reason? there is no sodding difference irrespective of who's in power; it is only your compliance with their law (they long ago abandoned justice) that enables them to carry on.

Why their heads are not poles, CINOs, Blairites and Brownites alike, outside Westminster I will never know.

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.

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.

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.