Politics

Nuclear energy for the win

Published on by

Congratulations, New Labour, you’ve finally proven that you are capable of making a rational, informed and sensible decision instead of pandering to holier-than-thou lobby groups, following political correctness and inflicting knee-jerk policies upon this weary populace that you so often forget have the power put you on the other side of the House of Commons.

I say that without an ounce of sarcasm. It’s perfectly obvious that nuclear power is the only realistic way to generate enough power to satisfy our baseline requirements over the coming decades without further contributing to global warming (sorry, “climate change”). Renewable energy sources have and will continue to have their place, contributing wherever they can to the National Grid, but they cannot hope to generate enough reliable power on their own to cater for our present requirements, let alone future requirements.

There is nothing to fear with nuclear reactors. Everyone who’s against the idea shrieks “Chernobyl” at the mere mention of the word, as if they’ve been programmed to do so by the short-sighted anti-nuclear propaganda that’s been pushed around over the past 30 years. But Chernobyl was a bad reactor. It was of a design that has not been used since and will never be used again. It required a team of technicians to work around the clock to prevent it from blowing up, whereas modern reactors require a team of technicians to work around the clock to prevent them from shutting down.

Three Mile Island is another example used by the anti-nuclear lobby as a reason why nuclear power is bad. But using Three Mile Island in that way is a total own goal. The Three Mile Island incident proved how safe reactors are when something goes wrong. All the safety devices kicked in when the problem was detected and the reactor was shut down. Surely that’s what we want to see? What would they rather had happened?

It’s a brilliant decision, and I don’t say that of New Labour lightly.

Parenthood is a lifestyle choice

Published on by

There was this bloke who wrote into Metro the other week recounting a tale of how he, a disabled person (the exact nature of his disabilities were not divulged), had bought a first class train ticket. He didn’t absolutely have to travel in first class, it was possible for him to travel in standard class, but he choses to do so because it’s easier for him to get around the first class cabin than it is the standard class cabin. First class rail tickets cost a fortune, but to him the benefits of such a ticket were worth it.

On a recent train journey he shared the first class cabin with a young mother with a child in a push-chair, who was boasting to an apparently unrelated fellow passenger about how she had received a free upgrade from the train staff because she had a child in a push-chair. This enraged the author of the letter, because this woman had received a free upgrade to first class due to self-inflicted inconvenience brought about by her decision to have a child, whereas his disability was most certainly not acquired by choice and yet no such preferential treatment was extended to him.

Frankly, he had every right to be enraged. It’s rapidly becoming a common perception that parents are somehow “disabled” because of their offspring and are thus being afforded luxuries such as “parent and child” parking spaces outside the entrance to supermarkets, fast-track priority boarding on aircraft (presumably so the child can practice the crying that it intends on doing for the whole flight) and now, apparently, free first class rail ticket upgrades.

Let’s make no mistake here, with very very few exceptions, the decision to have a chid is entirely voluntary. It is something that you inflict upon yourself, you’re making a rod for your own back, both financially and practically, and your offspring should be nobody else’s responsibility but your own. You should not be entitled to special treatment at the expense of others, especially those who’ve chosen NOT to contribute to the planet’s vastly unsustainable population growth. It was your choice and if you’re not up to dealing with the consequences of your decision then you perhaps should have not procreated in the first place.

Having to support other peoples’ kids through funding child benefit is galling enough, but to be told of by some busybody in a supermarket car park for parking in a parent and child parking space when no other spaces are available is a step over the line, in my opinion. Also, is it really that unreasonable to park in such spaces after 9.00pm when all children of the age that would possibly benefit from the extra space either side of their mothers’ Renault Scenics should be in bed? I don’t think so.

My mother fared perfectly well when myself and my younger brother were young without parent and child parking spaces or any other concession. This was also in the days before large, out of town supermarkets with giant car parks; my mother had to go to the Sainsbury’s in Woking town centre and park in the multi-storey car park, where the lifts rarely worked and when they did they were always jammed full of people. Did she complain? No, because she was thankful that she could do the weekly shop in just one store. To hell with the parking arrangements.

It seems that modern parents these days think that they have it hard, as if they’re the first generation of humans that’s had to procreate, and that everyone should lend them a hand to help cope with their insurmountable, self-matyring task that they feel has been forced upon them. The truth is, quite like their pampered, ignorant offspring, they don’t know they’re fucking born. Having children is a lifestyle choice, and just like every lifestyle choice it comes with its costs and disadvantages. I was going to ask if there were special parking spaces for fat people, but since most fat people consider themselves disabled these days one might argue that there actually are, but that’s a whole different, yet strikingly similar, argument.

If I had my way then parents would be made to bear the full cost of their children. There would be no child benefit; indeed it would be replaced by a tax on third and subsequent children. The planet’s population growth is unsustainable in almost every country and yet governments absolutely depend on it in order for their economies to work, since most welfare states are essentially giant, long-term pyramid schemes, which require ever increasing numbers contributing at the lower levels in order to work. One day that’s going to come to a cataclysmic, apocalyptic end, at which point the availability of parent and child parking spaces will be the least of anyone’s worries.

So shut the hell up when I park in your sacred car parking spaces, and stop blocking up the aisles of Sainsbury’s Local with your fucking 4-wheel-drive push-chair containing what is quite obviously an able-bodied but fucking lazy five year old. Don’t take your kids to a restaurant of any standard above McDonalds until they’ve learnt to behave themselves in public and not sit in their chair and scream through their meal. Stop spending your child benefit on lottery tickets, I worked hard to give you that money that you perceive to be free; and don’t let your fucking uncontrollable kids sit on the escalator in front of me, blocking my path while you coo and fawn over them and tell them how cute they look together “like that”. I’ll wager that you let your kids go out on October 31st and bang on strangers’ doors demanding money and sweets too, whilst the rest of the year round engaging in precautions bordering on paranoia concerning their health and safety, most likely causing great inconvenience of some description to everybody else.

Think of the children!? No, that’s your job. Deal with it yourself. I make my bed a different way, you don’t get to lie in it just because you don’t like the way you’ve made yours. Not my problem. I didn’t ask you to have children.

New Labour lose benefit records in the post

Published on by

There’s no need to post BBC News links about this, everyone already knows about it. This “data protection” government have lost the benefit records of 25,000,000 people (nearly half the population) in the post, because someone at HMRC burnt them onto a CD-ROM and sent them in the mail, unrecorded and unregistered. They’ve now gone missing and could be absolutely anywhere.

Despite the obvious stupidity of this “blunder”, Alistair Darling has made some fucking stupid statements that, in my opinion, further highlight just how much he’s in over his head with his job:

“The police tell me that they have no reason to believe that this data has found its way into the wrong hands.”

Yes, Darling, but you (they) also conversely do not have a shred of evidence to suggest that they haven’t fallen into “the wrong hands” (an ironic term when used by the government that lost the records in the first place), due to their quite obvious and undeniable “lost” status. You can’t hope that people will find that reassuring when you still don’t know where they fucking are.

Mr Darling said people should monitor their accounts “for any unusual activity”.

What, that’s your official fraud prevention measure following on from this monumental, awesome fuckup? Keep an eye on our bank statements? I’m sure glad we’ve got someone as sensible and as clued up as you in charge of our economy! Still I don’t suppose you can be any worse than your wretched fucking predecessor.

As it’s been pointed out over and over again over the past couple of days, this is the same government that wants to introduce super secure ID cards for everyone to protect us from the nasty terrorists. Who apparently will be able to just download our information off Bittorrent.

More people need to lose their jobs over this. Having some no-name in HMRC resign simply isn’t enough, no matter how senior he is. The government also need to put their house in order regarding data protection laws. The private sector face very stiff penalties if they violate the Data Protection Act, with the most serious offences potentially leading to company directors being imprisoned. I don’t imagine Alistair Darling or any of his wretched New Labour cronies visiting Strangeways any time soon. One rule for them, another for the rest of us.

I’m just glad I don’t claim any benefit (for once).

What the CWU doesn’t want you to know

Published on by

_46586910_008154934-1This wretched postal strike pissed me off even before it started; my feelings on strikes and unions and all the associated irrelevant and redundant attitudes are well known. The posties are claiming the usual shit – they demand absolute and guaranteed job security and a nice fat pension, two things which the vast majority of people in this country haven’t a cat in hell’s chance of enjoying in a modern economy. But oh no, Royal Mail workers are special, just like the train drivers, and public sector workers. They deserve better!

Except they don’t. Today Royal Mail did the dirty on them (via The Daily Telegraph) and told everyone just what sort of unreasonable shit their workers demand of them on a daily basis. Ninety two points were made in total, the twelve most notable of which are as follows:

  1. Two or three hour minimum daily overtime – so if 30 minutes of actual work is required and completed, then between two and three hours’ payment is demanded.
  2. An additional allowance claimed for using particular vehicles – regardless of whether the individual has actually driven the vehicle.
  3. Automatic overtime if mail volumes reach a certain level – regardless of how many ordinary working hours remain that day.
  4. If a delivery round is finished before the end of the paid shift, the employee expects to be able to go straight home. But if it takes 10 minutes longer two to three hours’ over time is claimed.
  5. Set overtime level is claimed at Christmas, even if there is no need for any additional hours and no extra hours are worked.
  6. An additional two hour payment on Easter Saturday – regardless of whether any work required.
  7. No flexibility between different parts of the same sorting office – if an employee sorts letters for a particular postcode, they will not sort for the adjacent postcode, even though both activities are often in the same room.
  8. Signing in and out for a shift on arrival – so that no record of actual hours worked exists.
  9. Collection drivers expect overtime pay for doing collections outside usual route – even if it is done within usual working hours.
  10. Overtime to cover for an absent colleague – a full day is claimed, even if only half day needed and worked.
  11. Ban on any cross functional working, even of similar tasks under the same roof.
  12. Additional meal and grace breaks as custom and practice.

If you felt sorry for them before then I don’t see how you can now. Royal Mail, now a private company fighting for survival since it lost its cushy monopoly, should at this point be firing those on strike in blocks of 100 and rehiring from the pool of migrant workers who are only too happy to work twice as hard and for half as much. Want job security? Don’t fuck over your employer then. How is it difficult to see the logic in that?

Crossrail gets the green signal

Published on by

BBC NEWS | England | London | Crossrail gets the green signal – oh look, Gordon Brown has announced funding for a major public transport project the day before the weekend that he’s tipped to decide whether or not to hold a general election, his party having previously announced it on the eves of both the 2001 and 2005 general elections. Imagine that.

Crossrail, although undoubtedly needed, is however a bit of a red herring. Most of the new route has already been built and has been in use for many decades. For the most part, the new trains will run on existing lines. The part that needs to be built, that will use up most of the £16bn, and will undoubtedly go over time and budget as all the usual suspects (consultants, New Labour cronies, etc.) jump on the gravy train is the tunnel under the centre of London. It really isn’t like they’re building a brand new east to west rail route through London, so the £16bn price tag and the planned timescale (over a decade from now) does seem a bit hefty. One has to wonder how far £16bn would go towards building one of the many shelved proposals to improve the urban motorway network in London, political correctness over climate change notwithstanding.

In any case it isn’t right that a new public transport project, which the commuting public cries out for every day of their lives as they are packed onto their sardine tins on a railway network that hasn’t seen any significant expansion since the second world war, is used as a shiny election badge. New Labour have had ten years to do something about the railway network in this country and they’ve fucked it up at every opportunity, except of course when it suits them.

Lib Dems back migrant ‘amnesty’

Published on by

BBC NEWS | Politics | Lib Dems back migrant ‘amnesty’ – right, so it’s not like the Liberal Democrats are ever going to get into power, so they may as well promise free bubble gum for everyone for all the good it will do them, but this isn’t going to stop me from taking issue with this absurd vote-losing policy.

The Liberal Democrats have said that after ten years of living in the United Kingdom, illegal immigrants should get the right to earn citizenship, which would mean passing language tests, demonstrating a long-term commitment to the UK and having no criminal record. There are two major problems with this that I can see:

  1. How can an illegal immigrant not have an effective criminal record? By their very presence in the country they are committing an offence. Whether that offence is a civil or criminal offence is irrelevant, it is still an offence since they are breaking a law of the land. This creates a paradox with the requirement to not have a criminal record when “earning” citizenship.
  2. On the basis that illegal immigrants are, in fact, inherently and automatically criminals by their very presence in the country, the ten year “amnesty” suggests that as long as they don’t get caught for ten years from the time they enter the country then they’re home and dry and absolved of their offences against the law. Why should this therefore not be applied to all crimes? If I go and rob a bank, or murder someone, and manage to not get caught for ten years, should I then expect to be let off? Why is this different with illegal immigrants?

This policy is about as well thought out as the other recent infamous Liberal Democrat policy of stating that they will raise income tax. If this wasn’ silly enough, they announced this policy before a general election. It’s little wonder that the Liberal Democrats aren’t in power, nor ever will be. Leftie handwringing idiots.

Unelected and unwanted Prime Minister

Published on by

So, in 48 hours we’ll have a new Prime Minister and Leader of the House of Commons in the respective forms of Gordon “Pension Robber” Brown and Harriet “the Harlot” Harman. The media have, for the past number of weeks, been speculating on how the country will improve with Blair gone and Brown finally moving next door. I’ve got news for you. It won’t.

Quite surprisingly, Brown has already suggested that he might call an early general election, as early as spring 2008. This is a full two years before a general election must be called. I’m sure that Brown has some sneaky, sinister, self-serving reasons why he might do this, because let’s face it, there are no selfless acts with New Labour and especially not Gordon Brown, but for the moment I’m willing to judge it on face value.

The coronation of Gordon Brown as Prime Minister is a dramatically undemocratic event. I know I’ve ranted about this before, but I might remind readers that this government lost the popular vote in the 2005 election and Gordon Brown was uncontested in the leadership bid. Even John Major, when he succeeded Margaret Thatcher, had to compete in and win a leadership competition within his own party, even if he was not voted into the premiership by the electorate.

It’s not right. From Wednesday Britain will be more of a dictatorship than any of the countries which it’s involved itself with under the pretence of installing democracy over the past decade. It’s a spectacle and I very much hope that everyone will see the Emperor’s New Clothes for what they actually are.

Democracy? Pfft!

Published on by

People say there’s no reason to be bitter about the outcome of the election. Labour won it fair and square, right? The result reflects the will of the people, like in any good democracy? Rubbish. There was nothing “fair and square” about this election and there’s every reason to be bitter about its outcome.

Now, let me blind you with statistics. Let’s first of all discuss this “will of the people” thing. While it is true that, by a whisker, Labour won the greatest proportion of the votes (35.2%), consider the following:

  • 35.2% is way under half of all votes cast. This means that 64.8% of votes cast were not for New Labour.
  • When taking turnout into account, only 22% of voters voted for Labour. The others either voted for another party, or didn’t vote at all. So now we have Labour winning with less than a quarter of the electorate voting for them.
  • Broadly, the proportion of the UK population that is eligible to vote is two thirds (very broadly: 60 million population, 40 million electorate). Applying this 2:3 ratio to the portion of the electorate that voted Labour means that just under 15% of the population voted for them. Yes, the current (or, technically, the soon to be formed) government was put in power by less than 15% of the population of the country, all of which have to live under its governance and law.

I’d therefore hardly call Labour’s win “the will of the people”, so don’t bleat on about it. The will of the people is apparently absolutely irrelevant when deciding who’s going to run the country.

Observe the charts below. Both show the same data, but in different ways. They both show the percentage of the votes each party received plotted against the percentage of Commons seats they won with that vote, the number of seats won is of course what counts at the end of the day.

Donut!

Donut!

Bar chart!

Bar chart!

Exactly how can a system be fair when it can allow a party to gain 24.7% extra seats with only 2.9% extra votes over the next most popular party? How the fuck does that work? I’m not saying that the Tories deserved to win, indeed their proportion of seats is very close to their proportion of the vote, so the system obviously works in their case, but look at the Liberal Democrats: 22% of votes were cast for them, yet they only get 9.6% of the seats. Their votes-to-seat ratio (in terms of percentage) is 2.29, yet Labour’s is 0.63, which means that the Libdems apparently had to work 3.7 times harder to win seats than Labour did.

Seriously, don’t talk to me about “democracy” and “winning fair and square”. There’s nothing democratic, fair or square about this whatsoever. As I’ve said before, don’t ask me to come up with a foolproof alternative, because I don’t have one and as I’m not a politician it’s frankly not my job to do so. But that doesn’t mean that I, as a voter, am not allowed to voice my great dissatisfaction with this so called “democracy”. Indeed, if the UK was a tin-pot sandy country in the Middle East, George Bush would have probably come and enacted regime change by now since the makeup of the government most certainly does NOT reflect the will of the people.

Three minute silence

Published on by

Grumpier Old Men :: Three minute silence for the tsunami victims – hear bloody here. This bit in particular is brilliant:

We were recently told by our government to observe 2 minutes silence for a Briton that had decided against government advice to go to a country at war to make a fast buck and was then kidnapped and executed after ignoring the advice of local people who warned him not to go to certain places and without military escorts.

Some weeks later another Briton in that country who had lived there half their life helping the poor repressed people of that country for no personal gain was kidnapped and executed but no silence. Why not?

I personally forgot about the three minutes’ silence and carried on working, and to be frank I didn’t notice anybody else stop for it either, whether in the office or outside my window. Buses didn’t “pull over” as the local rag would have me believe, people didn’t jump to a stop on the pavement, the phones kept on ringing and the builders kept on banging annoyingly.

Yes, it’s a terrible tragedy, but please, for the love of God, standing still for three minutes isn’t going to help anyone. It’s tacky, it’s nanny-state, it’s inconvenient and above all it’s extremely unnecessary. I refuse to have that hand-wringing sanctimonious Tessa Jowell telling me how I should feel and how I should mark those allocated feelings.

I’d also like to point out that the oh-so-generous United States’ contribution to the tsunami disaster relief fund amounts to just one and a half days of Iraq war costs. So fuck you Dubyah and your holier-than-thou aren’t-we-everyone’s-friend speeches. Your country is so fucking rich partly due to getting fat off the backs of countries such as India and Indonesia. I present exhibits A and B: Union Carbide and Nike. So yes, get your fucking money and marines over there as soon as possible, and take that fucking halo off your head. That is all.

By the way, Grumpier Old Men is what the Internet was invented for.

New Labour parable

Published on by

I nicked this off someone on the Internet, who nicked it off someone else, who in turn nicked it off some other person, and none of us have any idea who wrote it, so I won’t even bother with any credits beyond “I didn’t write this”.

The Original Version

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he’s a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.

The New Labour Version

It starts out the same, but when winter comes, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving. The BBC, ITV, CNN and all the rest of the News Reporters show up and provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to film of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

The entire country is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can it be that, in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Then a representative of the NAAGB (The National Association for the Advancement of Green Bugs) shows up on Newsnight and charges the ant with “Green Bias” and makes the case that the grasshopper is the victim of 30 million years of greenism. Kermit the frog appears on Trisha with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when he sings “It’s Not Easy Being Green.”

Tony and Cherie Blair make a special guest appearance on the Evening News and tell a concerned Trevor MacDonald that they will do everything they can for the grasshopper who has been denied the prosperity he deserves by those who benefited unfairly while the Conservative were in power.

Gordon Brown exclaims in an interview with David Frost that the Ant has gotten rich off the “back of the grasshopper”, and calls for an immediate tax hike on the Ant to make him pay his “fair share”.

Finally the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity and Anti-Greenism Act. RETROACTIVE to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government. Cherie gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of high court judges that are appointed from a list of single-parent welfare mothers who can only hear cases on Thursday afternoon between 1:30 and 3:00 PM when there are no talk shows scheduled.

The ant loses the case.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ants food while the government house he’s in – which just happens to be the ant’s old house – crumbles around him since he doesn know how to maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the snow. And on the TV, which the grasshopper bought by selling most of the ants food, they are showing Tony Blair standing before a wildly applauding group of cretins announcing that a new era of “Fairness” has dawned in the UK.

It’d be funnier if it wasn’t so dangerously similar to reality.

Social Widgets powered by AB-WebLog.com.