Thinking Outside Of The Box

Your Nan. And A Solution to Greece's Debt Crisis

So a report is out describing the latest Titanic-deck-chair-rearrangement to the welfare system; this time to the social care system for the elderly and infirm:

"Social care costs in England should be capped so people do not face losing large chunks of their assets, an independent review says.

Council-funded home help and care home places for the elderly and adults with disabilities are currently offered only to those with under £23,250 of assets.

The Dilnot report said the threshold should rise to £100,000 and a £35,000 lifetime cap on costs would be "fair".

But the Treasury is known to have doubts about the expense of the plans.

Just over £14bn a year is spent by councils on social care.

However, the changes would cost an extra £1.7bn a year if they were implemented now - and this figure could rise by 50% as the "baby boom" generation begins to retire."

So under the law of unfeasible, made-up politician numbers lets call it £5Bn added to the above figure; this, if I've understand it correctly, is the amount of money taxpayers today will be screwed for whilst the vast Ponzi scheme wheels on.

I have an alternative suggestion: Greece is liable to British banks for £14.1Bn; I'll take a guess and say the same idiot bankers, who put themselves in a hole in this country for Gordo forked out billions, are the ones likely wrist-deep in greek debt.

So how about this - why not just do a straight swap for the debt? Those bankers get their debt clear in about 75 years and our wrinklies get to spend their twilight years in sunnier climes whilst the greeks enjoy the written off debt-swaps all for the knock-down price of looking after a few more wrinklies, likely re-energising local economies spending their own cash on cheap ouzo and dolmades.

I can dream.

In Mixed Minds

Been a while guys - mega mega busy but this caught my eye (H/T to Dick Puddlecote):

Gibbs became pregnant aged 15, but lost the baby in December 2006 in a stillbirth when she was 36 weeks into the pregnancy. When prosecutors discovered that she had a cocaine habit – though there is no evidence that drug abuse had anything to do with the baby's death – they charged her with the "depraved-heart murder" of her child, which carries a mandatory life sentence.
...
"Women are being stripped of their constitutional personhood and subjected to truly cruel laws," said Lynn Paltrow of the campaign National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW). "It's turning pregnant women into a different class of person and removing them of their rights."

No, how the state views the rights of unborn children with respect to their mother's behaviour, whether they intentionally seek to commit "foeticide" or their lifestyle simply endangers a child to a great degree, is what is being rightly challenged in court.

I say rightly in a neutral capacity: regardless of my views of state-mandated child murder when a precarious position appears in law, particularly in one where it is readily apparent the waters are being tested to see precisely what the law makers meant when they passed it, it follows logic that the first few cases will be painful; all cases should when one entity in the equation is murdered.

The next story in the article illustrates this perfectly:

Bei Bei Shuai, 34, has spent the past three months in a prison cell in Indianapolis charged with murdering her baby. On 23 December she tried to commit suicide by taking rat poison after her boyfriend abandoned her.
Shuai was rushed to hospital and survived, but she was 33 weeks pregnant and her baby, to whom she gave birth a week after the suicide attempt and whom she called Angel, died after four days. In March Shuai was charged with murder and attempted foeticide and she has been in custody since without the offer of bail.

This is both a long-standing contention between libertarians: whether abortion is something allowed by negative freedoms or not, and a dilemma that would test the Wisdom of Solomon; as tragic as her story and life obviously are did it really require her making that decision to end not only her own life but that of her child's?

I am, quite obviously, of the caste of libertarians who believe that negative freedoms protect the life of unborn children; there is something abhorrent in nature that allows us to abrogate the rights of one who's only crime is to grow, a living testament of either or both parents' recklessness: there is no greater example of human sacrifice to vanity than this.

Casting aside fear of straw men a question: were I to walk up to a happily pregnant woman and kick get in the stomach causing the baby to die should I end up in jail? If so then why does my act of foeticide carry criminal consequences? Is it merely because of the mothers desire to have children or the child's life?

All this and more will no doubt be debated in one way or another in the coming months surrounding such instances as these as the argument for human sacrifice starts not to look so glossy; it tends to excuse lifestyle choices which are naturally risky by allowing innocents to pay the price.

All that being said I do share Mssr. Puddlecote's concerns over the other religious aspect of this: that of the ascendency of the great Shiboleth of Public Health:

We've already seen a few rumblings, and I'm sure we've all heard the "it should be classed as child abuse" line many times already with regard to parental lifestyles. So why not just go that little extra step and push for the prosecution of women who have problematic pregnancies while also being obese, consuming cigarettes, or drinking in excess of guidelines, eh?

We'll just have to take it on trust that those currently taking the opportunity to rail against the religious right on the criminalisation of pregnant mothers will be consistent when the idea is picked up by the predominantly left-leaning health lobby.

I will not be holding my breath either; it has never been a problem for the left to excuse ones' actions as you hold the right opinions: climate change fanatics bending results or damaging energy companies property are fine; conversely skeptics are "fair game" whether the operate above board or not.

Sadly the cost is eternal vigilance, not shutting the questions down; for good or ill these lady's actions (and that of the men who are as copacetic to these situations as any) must be questioned - we may not like the answer but we should endeavour to keep it accountable to all, not just those in unassailable positions of power over life or death.

Screwed. Royally Screwed

At 23 months old my daughter favourite garden object is our clothes line pole, she is forever clambering onto tables to dance, and she has a prediliction for putting her face in piles of spilt talc when I change her.

Epic fail.

And There Will Be Those Who Think This Man Cold

Gary Bennell, 52, put aside his grief over the death of 27-year-old son Jon to admit he hoped he too would have the "guts" to fight back if confronted by intruders.
...
He added: "The family view is he's dead and we're sorry about it and we're grieving. He's not lived with us for a few years. He was on bail for burglary and that's just the way he was.

"My wife is gutted - broken-hearted. Whatever has happened in the past between us, he's still our child - or he was still our child."

And yet you can be for private property even when it means the death of a wayward son.

Only hope I never have to endure what this brave man has endured.

Kudos sir.

Am I The Only One More Offended By The Use Of Internet Twit-Talk?

A juror who contacted a defendant via Facebook, causing a £6m drugs trial to collapse, has been jailed for eight months for contempt of court.

Couldn't happen to a nicer lady; this is just grating though:

Fraill also described her role on the jury in their conversations. "All that note-taking was just killing time. lol. drew more than i wrote lol," she said.

Mr Garnier had told the High Court that the contact and discussion had been in direct breach of the judge's repeated directions to the jury - and it constituted a contempt of court.

Peter Wright QC, for Fraill, said his client was terrified at the prospect of prison and was distraught and inconsolable about what she had done.

He described her as a woman of completely unblemished character before she "lost her senses" in the Facebook exchanges.

Should be done for murder...of the English language.

Problem With Proscription Not Application

Thousands of sex offenders, including rapists and paedophiles, will be able to apply to be removed from the sex crimes register under human rights laws, the Government has announced.

A Supreme Court ruling has forced the Government reluctantly to draw up new rules allowing serious sex offenders put on the register for life to have their place on the list reconsidered.
...
The case is the latest involving the Act to set judges against political opinion. It has increased calls for reform of the Act, which is being reviewed by a Coalition committee.

Under current rules, anyone sentenced to more than 30 months in jail for a sexual offence is put on the register for life on release. Those on the register are monitored by police and visited regularly by officers. The Home Office estimates that there are about 44,000 people on the register, about 25,000 of them for life.

The problem here as I see it is that sex offender registration has been argued effectively against as an arbitrary measure introduced and enhanced by knee-jerk reactionaries I'm the previous government (note, almost completely unopposed by the current one) in response to some pretty dire but isolated events (Ian Huntley's victims in the long run, with the hideous level of CRB checks required to even go near a kid, extend much further than the children the scummy bastard murdered); a 17 year old boy who sleeps with his 15 year old girlfriend should not be trusses up in the same band as a sexual predator like Huntley (which thankfully the law reflects I believe).

What this is actually arguing for is a more comprehensive set of rules governing sex offender registry; we already do this in lot other criminal hearings: 5 years for burglary reduced to 2.5 for a guilty verdict; 1 year for shoplifting suspended as it's a first offence - why shouldn't the law be able to say "10 years in jail with a further 10 on the sex offender register before you can appeal"?

What's that? Don't like the fact your judge is giving too lenient a sentence? Elect a new one or elect his boss on a tough on crime ticket.

Oh that's right you can't.

And maybe that is the problem; the extent of the human rights act only extends as far as parliament will let it - if our government is lazy in stating the rules surrounding it, or delegates it to soft, lefty judges then what the hell do you expect?

Expect more from your mps', and the rule of law will follow; ask for democratic police chiefs, justices' and hospital commissioners and they will respond to your concerns.

Or lament at the feet of the daily mail and talk about the "laws being made"; crap politicians make crap laws make crap society - demand more.

May I Make A Suggestion About The Scale Of This & Also Provide A Solution To The Homeless Problem?

Via @Old_Holborn on twitter O saw this; a plan to make prisoners work and contribute to society.

Many of my fellow libertarians may identify this with slavery to which I say the following: by and large criminals bought and paid for their proclivities, whether theft, rape or murder*, before they read the fine print - their problem, not society's. That all said I found interesting:

The thinktank suggests the introduction of a new prisoner minimum wage. This would be less than the national minimum wage to reflect the costs of board and lodging but more than current inmate earnings to encourage prisoners to work and save for their release as well as pay into a victims' fund.

What could this "prisoner wage" be? Let's tot it up:

Average cost to house prisoner in the UK: £34,000 (any better references please send me).
National Minimum Wage: £6.08
Salary based on 40hrs @ min. wage.: £12650
Therefore:
cost of prisoner wage = 12650 - 34000 = -21350

So the minimum prisoner wage is actually -£10.26 an hour; they still owe money for the cost of hosting them at our majesty's pleasure: so no wage then, at best, and longer working hours at worst.

And if prisoners don't like it? Tough: that case they can stay in jail indefinitely.

Thus solving the homeless problem as well; live on the street? commit a criminal act, refuse to work, live in prison for the rest of your life.

Flagrant Advertising, But Something I Am Actually Looking Forward To:

Feel like you did when you were on the e-train back in the 90s at Gatecrashers: buy Child of Eden.

Viral video by ebuzzing

Having just downloaded fun labs which babyrat loved I'm sure she'll love this.

Or have a fit.

Comment On Richard Murphy's Tax Clog: D'ya Think It'll Get Through??

Done in response to this piece of odourous doublethink:

No - I prefer freedom within a defined rule of law and the means to pay for it's upkeep; it matters not one jot if that is achieved by a dictatorship, democracy or theocracy, though all 3 and more besides have been found profoundly wanting.

Democracy beyond arbitrating over how best to deal with infringements on negative freedoms will also trend to tyranny and their suppression; it has become a decision between 2 wolves and a sheep as to who to eat for dinner.

And I will have no part in moralised cannibalism.

Apologies about my absenteeism - work calls, and frankly the pays better. I am still reading and seething though people.

Peace.

Proof There Is A God.

And he hates infidelity:

Chris Huhne’s career was hanging by a thread last night after his estranged wife agreed to testify that he asked her to take speeding points for him.

All part of a crass attempt to avoid controversy when he was contesting a seat in parliament by avoiding a ban for his precocious driving habits, something which later happened anyway when he was caught driving whilst using a mobile phone.

This is all the more fattening (being so rich and all) considering his last generic erection campaign was thought on the ticket that he was a family man - all the while schtuming a lefty bunt in a think tank.

Hopefully this'll mark the end of the lib dumb's insane climate policies.

We can live in hope.