More encouragement

So we can expect Broon to take a fact-finding holiday (sorry, visit) together with the gorgeous, pouting Jacqui, and then steamroller this through Parliament (assisted no doubt by bribed Ulster Unionists and Lib-Cleggs) before the electorate throw him out next election.

Much more of this, and even we Brits won't wait for an election.

And pigs will fly...

Brown promised us a referendum on the EU constitution - whatever name it went under.

Brown's promises promise nothing!

@AC/Licence fee

Spot on, old bean.

I was finding it very tedious pointing out the difference between Licence and License to the linguistic hoi-polloi, and believing I was the only one not succumbing to some ghastly teenage dialect contrived from US ghetto language and those hideous SMS abbreviations.

One shouldn't be too surprised at our rebel colonial cousins though; just look at who they have elected as their supreme leader in their last two elections.

That fact alone speaks volumes regarding their collective intellect.

My coat please, waiter. It's the one with "Back in 42 days" across the back.

The age-old question...

Quis custodiet ipsos custodies?

@Kevin

"Umm...penguins? in the North?"

Certainly - many northern zoos have penguins...

STBO

Stating the bleedin' obvious......

"Quite why police allowed a seven-month-old baby to be held in detention alongside his parent is unclear. ®"

Very likely it's because a seven-month-old baby is generally not competent to look after itself whilst Mum's in chokey.

Reality Check

Since in most of Europe, but especially here in the UK, we worship the human rights of (strongly) suspected terrorists, won't imprison the little dears, give them all the welfare benefits they can claim, and have a expanding home-grown jihadist movement yet STILL make their rights paramount and sacrosanct, who can be surprised if the US is a little bit circumspect?

@ Another AC

"The old days are gone. That's why they are the old days. Adapt."

Nope!

Not necessarily the best move.

Why accept change just because it's change, if it's effects are adverse?

Nothing wrong with the old days coming back. Gone does not necessarily mean gone irreversibly.

Hitler told Germany that non-fascism was the old days, as Musso told the Italians.

Hitler & Musso are now "the old days".

Non-fascism is back.

The old "old days" are the new "now".

Adapt to and accommodate the crypto-fascist PC "liberals", and they win.

We don't need to let that happen.

@AC@AC

I'm a little (well, a lot) sick of the old "If you don't want the fine, don't do the crime" mantra.

In the old days, when front-line Plod were allowed to think for themselves and use discretion and judgement (remember those?), people who were a danger or potential danger to other road-users were nicked and rightly so.

Someone at speed limit+4mph might have been ignored or given verbal advice - depending on the circumstances - e.g. a stone-cold sober driver at 0600 on a Sunday morning is not exactly threatening the fabric of our society.

However, a totally pissed driver meandering around at speed limit-1mph won't get picked up by the robotic taxmen, yet they are a serious problem - but with no plod around, who's going to stop them?

I know which one worries me most, and which one should be on the receiving end of plod's attention.

Smug attitudes like AC's are manna to the likes of Bliar, Broon & the gorgeous pouting Jacqui - , who's going to stop THEM with people ready to spout the NuLab mantra/sophistry

Paris, 'cos I think she shares a mindset with the smuggies...

And what's more.....

As a keen amateur photgrapher (despite being a graphic designer, with over 17 years of experience with Photoshop), I still use a brace of Nikon F4s bodies and Fuji reversal film - so I can't "delete" even if told to.

In almost any of the photographic magazine (try AP), there are a myriad of reports of innocent amateurs feeling - for absolutely no legal reason - the full weight of both Plod AND Plastic Plod (CPSO's); the latter being so intellectually challenged they appear to believe they have powers exceeding those of 007....

Photographers have been dragged to Police Stations (if they're open, of course), home computers seized & examined, memory cards erased on the flimsiest of pretexts - often due to some CPSO.

It appears that many CPSOs have a permanent inferiority complex, and such occurrences prove that often these complexes are thoroughly justified.

However, when it's Plod doing the photography, that's all right then...

And they still wring their hands over "The unprecedented gulf between the police and the general public"...

Obviously

It has nothing to do with the unelected bureaucracy keeping tabs on us, then....

Metinks the time for a latter-day Wat Tyler is nigh.

@CCTV/AC

That's because Plod isn't interested in whether or not the serfs batter/prey on each other.

Since Blair (either one) politicised Plod and proliferated his beloved fast-tracked grads in social engineering to re-mould the plodforce to his requirement, Plod is now only interested in maintaining the power of the state, and forcing us to acknowledge that we exist to serve the state and the soi-disant intellectual elite who comprise it these days.

In the good old days (within my lifetime) the state existed to serve its citizens....

It's been quite a while since.

Mine's the one which says "Taxation Unit X67590/638" where a name tag would have once been...

@JasonW

I sincerely hope the Des O'Connor discs are an unwanted present.

If you purchased them voluntarily and of your own free will then either you should be sectioned for your own safety, or you should cut back on the use of exotic substances.

I can think of no other (or indeed ANY) rational explanation.

@John Stirling

Your profile is almost me. I'm with you 100%. I suppose there really IS a "silent majority".

However, I cannot understand the political apathy of such a large part of the UK electorate, who vote Labour :...because it's a working man's gummint, innit?"

No it's not - and never has been really. What originally started as a working-class movement rapidly became hijacked by self-proclaimed intellectuals of varying marxist hues - I believe Uncle Joe referred to them as "useful idiots",

They always become excessively authoritarian when in power - their smug, arrogant patronising mindset will brook no dissent:- since we're all naughty children, they know what's best for us and by God, they'll make sure we have it - willingly or otherwise, but have it, we will.

Their tenacious hold on authority is nothing more than an ego trip for those concerned.

A plague on their houses, and would that there were some real way to hold them to account for the damage they've done.

Clever...

Can't wait until the first genuine "flying phobic" gets picked up and vanishes for 42 days....

A step too far

We should never have given them the vote. My Grandad said it would all end in tears...

Paris - she knows her place

I think it's terrific.....

Something to totally confuse the gorgeous pouting Jacqui and Sir Ian when implementing the "Gimme your encryption key but don't dare tell anyone I've demanded it" bit of their draconian RIPA.

I seriously doubt if either has the intellect to comprehend "photon" or "polarise" - undoubtedly they believe the former to be a weapon used by the starship Enterprise, and the latter to be a property of certail sunglasses.

Stand by for mass arrests at Trekkies' conventions, and of anyone out wearing shades...

Alien? Well, neither of the aforementioned worthies are on (or from) the same planet as the rest of us.

@ Several of you

"...likely to be of use to..."

Of course it was deliberately left vague and unspecific.

That way both Plod & the gorgeous pouting Jacqui can decide that whatever you have with you or to which you have access when you're picked up can be deemed to fall into that category.

By Plod, I don't mean the majority of traditional thief-takers (PC up to Sergeant) but the high rankers (I think that's how it's spelt) who are fast-tracked University Graduates - generally in social studies ore something equally leftie & nebulous.

If it weren't so painful for us, it would be a very funny irony that all these lefties & liberals, when given a taste of power become super-chekists who make the Gestapo look like amateurs.

"It's a free country, innit?" is no doubt a phrase which will be deemed to be seditious if NuLab aren't removed (one way or another) soon.

Paris, 'cos like her, this country is well & truly fcuked...

@g e

Shouldn't worry about the watch list:- I frequently rail against the brain-dead twats who call themselves a government, their stalinist PC bed-mates and the oh-so-smug liberal elite supporters.

I have even been known to admire the pragmatic approach of one Guido Fawkes, from time to time.

So undoubtedly I'M on a watch-list, and I shouldn't wonder if the gorgeous pouting Jacqui (hope they've checked her driving licence) hasn't issued an advance copy of a 42-day disappearance warrant for me.

However, as this shower not only couldn't organise jollities in an ale production facility, but probably couldn't even fall over pissed properly afterwards, I'm not holding my breath over the efficiency of the execution of said warrant.

Sir Ian's Ploddery probably couldn't even find me in a line-up of African-Eskimo pygmies...

‘ID fraudsters target affluent’

Sensible.

Not a lot of point in targeting the impoverished.

Do I get my prize now?

Or do I just get my coat?

Consistency

Well, NuLab have made a big thing on inclusivity:-

Don't discriminate on the grounds of race:

Don't discriminate on the grounds of gender:

Don't discriminate on the grounds of race:

Don't discriminate on the grounds of faith:

Don't discriminate on the grounds of ethnic origin:

to which can now be added

Don't discriminate on the grounds of mental incompetence

Mine's the lasciviously and erotically-drawn picture of a raincoat.....

Freedom - a vanishing commodity

I've never visited a porn site, a contact site, a "social networking" site or even an anarchist/revolutionary site. None of the preceding interest me (well, maybe the last one, just a bit).

I do however regard as totally abhorrent and unnaceptable the idea of some self-appointed "worthies" telling me what I can & what I can't access.

Thanks to the British electorate being dumb enough to return NuLab to power since 1997, we have lost more freedoms in that 10 years than have been lost in the preceding 100 years and a freedom lost, even if temporarily, is NEVER regained.

These to$$pots need a reminder that WE are THEIR masters; they work FOR US.

It is NOT the other way round, and we are entitled to remove them by the ballot box or by other means if necessary!

Enough is enough.

Just Americans???

After 10+ years of a liberal elite pseudo-socialist government in the UK, and 30-odd years of an undemocratic unelected federal corrupt bureaucracy foisted upon us by lying politicians, it ain't just Americans who can't afford to live here - us poor bloody natives can't, either.

Nostalgia

Someone from Faceparty has just seen "Logan's Run"......

Mind you, a younger Jenny Agutter in her mini-toga is always worth seeing....

Whatever..

Whatever happens, however this & future cases go, it won't be in the consumer's favour and it probably won't be to the S/W publisher's benefit either.

It WILL however, ENORMOUSLY benefit those wonderful champions of everyman - I refer of course, to m'learned friends - some of whom, whose magnanimity knows no bounds, now work for a daily fee which is as little as my gross monthly income.

@Vernon Lloyd

"/Paris cause even she can see hypocracy"

So you share an English/spelling teacher with Paris?

Don't claim it was ironic - that would be hypocrisy.

Mine's the one with the OED & Roget's in the pockets, and "PEDANT" across the back......

@Most of you...

Like most of the liberal self-proclaimed elite, Broon is a bad case of arrested adolescence, and is still living (intellectually and politically) in the late 60's/early 70's radical student politics world.

Paris, 'cos she's actually smarter than most of 'em.

More awards

Let the tw@t (and hiss buddies) have cars on an empty but wet road.

With luck, we'll be able to present them with a Darwin Award to accompany their ASBO.

RIP?

RIP Act:-

Freedom R.I.P.

Liberty R.I.P.

Privacy R.I.P.

One assumes Gordon Brown's unused first name is Kenneth or something similar - making his initials a highly apt KGB.

Although I will now install PGP or similar - just for the buggeration factor - it appears more and more than "Ownlife" is moving from being discouraged to being prohibited.

And if any tw@t misses the point completely, and chants the NuLab mantra "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear", then I'll swing for the b@st@rd...

Cue for a quick chorus of "Oceania 'tis for thee"?

With good cause.....

My mate Sid was the victim of ID theft.....

Now he's just known as S

Mine's the one without the name-tag or label.....

Gov't contracts?

So now the NuLab's Gov't contracts will be screwed up by HP instead of EDS.

Why are civil servants so stupid over commissioning IT contracts - and why is it anathema to them to actually ask the end users what they actually need & what they actually want?

This is obviously a rhetorical question, as we all know Whitehall to be the last refuge of the terminally incompetent and the otherwise unemployable.

Paris, 'cos she has the intellectual capacity of which most Whitehall occupants can only dream...

Of course it was.....

Americans are Brits, anyway.

Just living (for the past 230-odd years) under a succession of rebel colonial governments.

Therefore it stands to reason that whatever is American is, underlying it all, British - albeit somewhat rebellious.

I'm sorry

The cheek of it: still, at least NZ Plod got to the bottom of it very quickly.....

OK, I'll leave quietly...

Mine's the very loud oversized check pattern, with the plastic squirty flower in the buttonhole....

Damn it

When I saw the headline "Extreme porn bill for Lords" I just assumed it was another huge account us poor bloody taxpayers would have to pay....

Paris - 'Cos she says ponography's no use to her, as she doesn't even own a pornograph.

Down the tubes

How long before the first "happy capping" vids get on You Tube?

Paris - 'Cos she knows all about tubes & vids...

Value or Shock! Horror! Gasp!

So if I print ten copies of a Van Gogh or Monet at A2 on my large-format inkjet, and offer them at a couple of quid each, would that be £20 of illicit goods......

.....or would Plod claim it at £125,000,000.00 (10 x assorted Van Goghs and/or Monets)

Paris, 'cos she's turned "dumb" into an art-form......

More nostalgia....

Yup, I started with Burroughs 30 years ago.

I surely recall "customers" paying loads for an upgrade, which consisted of removal of the restricting "cripple-card".

Not just Burroughs, but it was standard procedure in the days when the IT industry was the DP industry.

Ah, those wood-burning steam-powered computers.....

Well...........

I must admit the man does have a point, that if animal sperm-> woman is totally illegal, but man sperm-> animal is not, then as sure as eggs is eggs some mad sod will try it.

There are many examples of scientists attempting to, or managing to cross two closely-related but separate species (e.g. horse & zebra, Tiger & Lion etc.,) for little more reason than idle curiosity.

True, such hybrids are generally infertile, but we have seen quite a few examples of dotty scientists messing around with what they don't fully understand...

@You all

It doesn't matter who you vote for;- the government ALWAYS gets in...

Nostalgia

At one time, Government - both national and local (especially local) had a fair degree of altruism, and generally recognised that it was there to serve its electorate.

Now the boot is on the other foot, and the unholy alliance of Incapability Brown and The Straw Man has shown that all forms of government today is the last refuge of the terminally incompetent. - and regarding The Straw Man, why is it that ex-commies are so damned authoritarian and anti-freedom once they reach office? Must be all that time spent studying Uncle Joe.

The sole purpose of the electorate now is to serve the almighty state - we are the worker bees, Incapability fancies himself as Queen Bee but there is a definitely unnatural number of drones in his hive.

Muggers, buggers, robbers & rapists will always be lightly dealt with - after all, they are merely picking on another worker bee (or "Taxation Revenue Unit" in Brown's Brave New World) - but just let OAPs object to the profligate waste of their excessive Council Tax, or parents be sufficiently middle-class as to have some hopes for their offspring and try to get them into a school which hasn't been reduced to the lowest common denominator by (Talking) Balls, and they are enemies who go up against the authority of the state behemoth. This of course, cannot be tolerated.

No doubt the Ministry for Justice (copyright George Orwell) will soon be "The Committee for State Security", you will be stopped on the streets and checked by a CHEKA, and statues of Felix will abound.

Mine's the one with GULAG written across the back.

@I. Aproveoetc.

"If it were not for the likes of Yahoo, Microsoft and Google, that damned country would have been blackballed years ago."

To Yahoo, Microsoft & Google you had better add pretty damn well every manufacturer who uses Foxconn, inter alia, as component suppliers & OEM manufacturers as virtually ALL high-tech equipment is made in the good old PRC these days,

This means that as well as our systems being cheaper, all our data are belong to them...

@Anon. Cow.

I'm not restricting this to the jihadis:- the current judiciary's obsession with the yooman rites of ALL crims, perpetrators, illegals, feral yoof etc. to the total denigration of any rights the rest of us have to a comparatively peaceful existence IS a threat to the rest of us. I agree the other unacceptable threat is McStalin in no. 10 with his total obsession with centralised control freakery.

An independent judiciary SHOULD be the safeguard of our freedoms and liberty, but the current incumbents just ain't cutting the mustard.

It's little more than a bout of willy-waving between two cliques of the liberal elite who see the rest of us as mere fodder for their self-proclaimed intellectual ideas of social engineering.

It can justifiably be described as intellectual masturbation:- giving a warm glow of self-satisfaction to the perpetrator; being of absolutely no use to anyone else; and being rather distasteful to any onlooker(s).

Who judges the judges??

So even if Saudi Intelligence give us details of a plot, and names & addresses of would-be jihadis, our wonderful judiciary would refuse to let us imprison or deport them 'cos it would infringe their yooman rites.

Isn't this enough to get most judges sectioned as they are palpably non compos mentis, and present a very real danger to the public in general.

Mine's the one with the arrow pattern on it (or shortly will be, no doubt).

@ Jamie/Chris

You're getting the picture:- dissent aimed at NuLab is "Serious & Organised Crime". (Burglary is trivial, and doesn't merit a penalty).

We don't get tax allowances, 'cos we know that means we keep more of our own money: instead, we pay high taxes but can claim "benefits" which means we are receiving munificence by the benevolence of the Supreme Leader. This way of course, most will see Broon as being oh-so-generous, and will be afraid to vote against him as they are scared of losing these "benefits".

Dependancy culture deliberately encouraged to perpetuate NuLab's being in office?

Surely the Great One would never be that cynical - would he?

Yeah, right...

At least 15 years - or until his cell is needed for some dangerous pensioner withholding part of his council tax.

"Really dangerous" is reserved for those who question the power & authority of the Dear Leader's monolithic centralised state.

Depraved violence against your fellow citizens is nowhere NEAR as unacceptable to NuLab.

Multiples

If we get another 5 built - then that would accommodate virtually ALL the inhabitants of the Palace of Westminster...........

Just a thought.........

(but rather a nice one)

Mine's the one with arrows on - or probably soon will be...

Succintly

As there were sufficient retards (cerebrally challenged, if that gives you a cosier glow) to vote in this chronically incompetent bunch of cynical pathological liars not once, not twice but thrice, there are obviously sufficient of the said retards remaining to swallow the crap emanating from the Caledonian badger - who is, admittedly, just a glove puppet for The Supreme Leader.

They can count on these idiots, so they don't bother to conceal their contempt for the rest of us.

A plague on their houses!

@Philip

"This article fails at (sic) convincing me to stop using Vista."

Much as Galileo failed to convincing the Clergy that the sun was the centre of the solar system?

Ah well...

So, farewell then, Computerland.

A slow(ish) lingering demise awaits.

@ Oliver Magee

Oliver, you've missed the red herrings, distractions and plain irrelevancies:

You will have to be shot, stuffed and displayed in a case to show the masses that intelligence and erudition are not dead (yet)...