Posts by Spleen

Well, it couldn't be worse than GTA 4

"Moaty! Iss Gazza! Youse wanna go bowling?"

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The only way CEOP's campaign will ever end is if Facebook puts a giant scrolling banner on every page which reads 'JIM GAMBLE JIM GAMBLE JIM GAMBLE JIM GAMBLE JIM GAMBLE', preferably flashing in red. I'd heard of the 'oxygen of publicity' but didn't realise the extent to which some people depend on it to live.

If there is anyone out there still naive enough to believe that there is a difference between this government and the last one, all you need is seven words: "Jim Gamble - Suzi Leather - Martha Lane Fox". Months after the supposed regime change, they all still have jobs.

Ow, my eyes

From now on can we formally refer to MLF as Martha "Green Ink" Lane Fox?

I expect I "lose" quite a lot of money every year because I don't hoard the coupons that fall out of newspapers and magazines. Is it because I am a mental incompetent who needs re-education and counselling to stop my economic self-harm? No, it's because I can't be bothered. It's amazing the extent to which the concept of free will is utterly lost on government bureautards.

title

"the surgeon estimated the chances of Wei surviving such an injury were "one in ten thousand""

I love media statistics. Did he mean there is a one in ten thousand chance of stabbing someone in the head and missing all the arteries and motor control areas, or did he mean there is a one in ten thousand chance of surviving once someone's put a knife is in that particular position in your head?

Pyjamas

Aren't pyjamas considered daywear in the East, where they come from?

Er

"The difficulty of obtaining such a closure has already been addressed: as the main site is based in California, this would require agreement from the US authorities, who are quite wedded to the whole free speech thing."

Er, I don't think the Americans' famously unswerving committment to the rights of the individual has much to do with it. I doubt you'd get away with running an equivalent service for drug dealers where people could find local pushers and rate them for quality of product, price, friendly service, etc - even though there'd probably be more interest in it.

This is just a case of the good old special relationship at work. It's not that they believe that the website should remain up, it's just that it isn't doing any harm to Americans so they couldn't care less what our government thinks about it.

Unsurprising

Energy corporates don't want demonstrators ringing their offices whining about pollution. And energy corporates don't want the carbon trading scam, which will see the public paying them billions and billions of pounds to not heat their homes, endangered by reality. Hardly surprising that in their efforts to track down the whistleblower, chuck him in a cell and make an HIV-infected example of him, they've hit the usual number on their speed-dial labelled "Obliging Plod".

Sausages

"Laws are like sausages – it's best not to watch them being made."

Bad analogy, the sausage comparison only works for something that is valuable as a finished article.

Laws (by which I mean polits' laws such as RIPA III, not natural laws like "do not murder") are more like excrement - it's disgusting to watch them being made, it's just as disgusting to look at them once they've been made, and it's even worse to have them flung in your face, as happened to this poor sod.

Zap and clicker??

I was about to be the nth person to voice their bemusement at the "zap and clicker era", which sounds like it's come straight from a Cosby-style mumble about young kids with the zapping and clicking and the hipping and the hopping.

Then I remembered that as stupid as the phrase "zap and clicker" is, it doesn't carry even a tenth of the multi-layered stupidity of words like "transubstantiation" or "trinitarianism", so it seems a bit pointless to say it.

@Matt Hawkins

I think you may be getting your spouses of corrupt female polits mixed up. Mr Jacqui Smith is the one with the dodgy films, Mr Tessa Jowell is the one with the massive Italian bribery scandal.

So difficult to keep track of them, I know.

The good news here is that we can look forward to the plod arresting half the women's marathon, on the grounds that any woman going around outdoors wearing only briefs and a crop top must be touting for business.

Title

"For example, the person who gives private piano lessons or the person who puts a postcard in the local post office saying, 'I'm able to provide domiciliary care for dependent people.' They may decide that to be able to put on the bottom of the postcard 'ISA-registered' is something that gives comfort and it may be that the uptake is likely to be increased."

Which means that anyone whose postcard doesn't have "ISA-registered" at the bottom may as well write "I will rape your granny" below their phone number, what with all the other postcards in the window bearing their badge of approval from London. Certainly the pliant press will do everything they can to spread the socially correct view of such things, with regular stories of Imogen Middle-Class, 36, who was too tight to pay for an "ISA-registered carer" for her children and later found them being forced to pose for Russian websites.

And even if everyone in the village knows you're not a perv, that won't help you when plod turns up to ask you why exactly you didn't want to be registered. If your piano tutee sprains their wrist during Chopsticks and their mother hauls you up for assault, not being ISA-registered is basically going to be an admission of guilt.

Ah, the good old passive-aggressive modern state. Like Dracula, it needs an invite before it can come into your house and suck your blood, but somehow the fact that it's only there to suck your blood never prevents it from getting an invitation.

@AC: 13:08

Congratulations, you've earned yourself the online equivalent of the Quite Interesting klaxon.

It has to be pointed out every time this issue comes up, but the USA has no official language.

@Tanya Cumpston

What, when male egos are threatened they start spouting facts? Actually, I suppose rational argument is another of those stupid, pointless things that as a species we shouldn't have bothered with, not when we could have picked bigger muscles from the Spore creature creation screen instead.

No-one's disputing that Neanderthal physiology may have given them stronger arms than us, or that Roman military training gave their soldiers endurance that we haven't. What people are disputing, correctly, is that this is a bad thing and we should all feel ashamed.

McAllister's position is no different from a very regressed bully who walks up to people and goes "Hur hur hur, I've got bigger muscles than you". And gets constantly beaten up because having big muscles is not the same as being able to fight (as the Neanderthals would tell you, if they weren't extinct).

@the backlash

Obviously you'd be an idiot to go toe-to-toe with a madman wielding sharp objects. No argument there. You can't claim this was a misuse of the Taser.

However, the way in which the crime magically plummeted from murder to assault to resisting arrest doesn't do plod any favours. He tried to kill us! Really? Well, actually, I guess he wasn't trying to kill us, but he was definitely attacking us. Oh? Well, we did start it.

Yes, he got a plea bargain, but if you can't convince a jury to convict someone who's attacked officers of the law in broad daylight, surrounded by a surfeit of reliable witnesses, whether or not they've pleaded guilty, then either you are so bad at prosecution it's a wonder you can write your own name, or it's because they didn't commit that offence.

That kind of hysterical behaviour is all too common nowadays (you can be arrested for being threateningly tall, for God's sake), and colours everything else the cops do, including their decisions whether or not to deploy potentially lethal cattle prod guns.

"Ofcom received 20 complaints"

For perspective, Ofcom receive an average of 74 complaints every time an unmarried woman appears on a chat show and talks to the host without the presence of a chaperone.

Rationing?

Really, rationing? God, what a socialist concept that is. If Wal-mart was really a patriotic freedom-loving rooting-tooting American store, it would respond to the rise in demand by raising the price of ammo, until market equilibrium was restored and everyone got as much ammo as they were willing to pay for.

If only for comedy value. It's generally accepted that the Left stands for social freedom, while the Right stands for economic freedom, with a few exceptions such as the economic freedom to buy foreign goods, accept foreign investment, employ foreign labour, trade currency freely, borrow money, trade during other people's religious holidays, consume mind-altering drugs without referring to an approved list, etc etc. If Wal-mart did raise the price of ammo to market value it would be five seconds before they were picketing the car park, demanding that the government force Wal-mart to sell ammunition at "reasonable" prices so that they could afford to defend themselves against, er, the government.

@Dale 3

Yeah, why won't people just get over that? As if it's such a big deal. Come on guys, it's not like you've never emptied an entire pistol magazine into the back of an innocent man's head as the culmination of an extended amphetamine-fuelled fantasy that we're Mel fucking Gibson. What kind of society would we live in if killing people had consequences?

What a bloody surprise

Their current ad campaign tries so hard to recreate the atmosphere of Stalin-era propaganda posters, it may as well carry the slogan "In Soviet Britain, The People's Post Office Stamps On You!" So, for that matter, does their service (unless you're lucky enough to still have a rural post office run by people who know you, which you aren't, because they've closed them all down). Compulsory fingerprinting? Who cares? You should be pleasantly surprised if you leave without having a postal sack thrown over your head and being stuffed in a cattle truck to be taken to a New Deal labour camp, comrade.

@Aaron Em

"Did none of you nose-picking fools watch the fucking movie? The idea of "Precrime" in the movie was based on the precognitive capabilities of (presumably mutant) humans; the EU's latest plan involves statistical analysis of supposedly reliable behavioral indicators."

Which is actually a point against the EU's scheme. Mutant humans with pre-cognitive abilities are pure science fiction. They don't exist, and we can't imagine how they might exist, but - crucially - we can't say that it won't be possible for them to exist in the future.

Whereas when it comes to statistical analysis of databases, we know that the databases will be based on inaccurate data, we know that the people put in charge of administering the database (because they couldn't get a proper job) will introduce errors either through incompetence, spite or corruption, we know that the magical algorithm that analyses the data (cooked up by consultant cronies who know the right people to get the contact) will be shit, and we know that it will be virtually impossible to correct any errors in the database or flaws in the algorithm because The State Does Not Make Mistakes.

Our knowledge of this is not based on high-flown futuristic musings but on the cold, hard fact of prior experience - we know how bureaucracy works and what it does when it's in charge of databases. So if the EU told us that three bald mutant children in a swimming pool were going to decide who should be locked up and who shouldn't, that would actually be better than being told they were going to build a database. We know nothing about mutant pre-cogs, so we might be able to hope that they would do the job properly, whereas we know with certainty that a database won't.

Oh, and this is the EU, so I can't wait for someone to be imprisoned for life after the temp in charge of translating Ruritania's criminal records for entry into the database assumes that the Ruritanian word "ermurdrin" means "murder", when it in fact means "theft of gooseberry pie from old lady's windowsill". Since we already have the European Arrest Warrant, under which British citizens have been sent to hellhole jails on the other side of the continent because the corrupt judiciary of an emerging economy convicted them on blatantly manufactured evidence, without any recourse to British courts whatsoever, I can't see why not.

Lib Dems? For individual liberty?

This would be the party that's pledged to bring back the tax on how many windows you have in your house?

Daniel Finkelstein's article in the Times today is rather illuminating; it tells the story of how Lib Dems used to go around in unmarked vans dumping mattresses in people's back alleys, then turning up two weeks later and asking if there was "anything your local Liberal Party could do to help you". Whereupon, after being told there was a foul-smelling mattress that had been left in the back alley, they would obligingly take it away and, votes secured, dump the mattress a few streets down and repeat.

Finkelstein finds this rather admirable (he is the epitome of the political wonk) but normal people would see it as summing the Libs up rather well. There isn't a political opportunity so cynical that a Lib Dem won't seize it. They know they can promise anything they like because they'll never have to actually do anything.

Anyone surprised?

It is incredibly expensive for employers to employ people legally, what with tax, regulation, litigation, more tax, etc. Plus the "progressive" (i.e. regressive) tax system means that if an unemployed person takes a minimum-wage job legally, once you factor in the benefits he forfeits back to the state, he effectively pays income tax of about 90% for the privilege of trying to be a productive citizen. The two factors combined mean the country would collapse if black-market employment was outlawed.

Unless you expect our masters to clean their own offices and grace-and-favour houses and raise their own spawn, news like this should surprise no-one.

(And no, I'm not referring to the policies of any particular "party". Neither differs significantly on either side of the above equation.)

Is it worthwhile?

If Gordon Brown had been Prime Minister at the time the prosecution of Turing went ahead, would he have opposed Turing's prosecution, or at least immediately used all his political weight to repeal the fascist laws in the future? Of course he bloody wouldn't. He'd have either supported it, or done a Lockerbie and done everything to avoid giving the impression that he had any opinion or influence on the matter.

That is why an apology from his lips is totally worthless. Basically, nothing has changed, and an apology is only worthwhile as a recognition that you did wrong and a commitment not to act the same way in the future. We may not have laws against homosexuality in this country right now, but the present government is just as obsessed with power as the ones that wrote them and maintained them.

I wonder which poor sods who commit suicide after being maliciously persecuted by Brown's anti-paedo or anti-terror or Prohibition laws we'll be giving posthumous apologies for forty years from now.

@AC 11:57

Indeed, it's not the policeman's job to decide whether someone is innocent or guilty (unless it's a fixed-penalty offence, but let's leave that to one side). But that doesn't mean you can just arrest anyone for anything and let the courts sort it out - you have to reasonably suspect them of something. And in this case the accusation was manifestly idiotic for reasons already gone over far too many times.

@Barney Carroll

Believe it or not, not everyone is a Reg-reading cynic who absorbs at least three stories a day about some poor sod being targeted by the Kafkaesque justice system. Many people living in Western democracies still have an honest, deep-down belief that the state is their friend and that the police don't arrest someone without a good reason. Then they get arrested for something like this and are suddenly confronted with the way the world actually works. I don't think "emotionally devastated" is an exaggeration at all.

Not the problem

Scientology's status as a religion is not the problem here - the problem is the religious hate law itself. Scientology IS different from mainstream religions for various reasons, but one of the things it shares is a willingness to co-opt the law to suppress criticism of their lunatic beliefs, their perverse morality and their vile practices.

If you go out and beat up a priest, or host a rally and shout "Death to Christians", you can already be arrested under secular laws. Religious hate laws should be shot down on sight, not because they're proposed by Scientologists, but because they're inherently inimical to human liberty. It's usually people that need to be protected from religion, not the other way around.

Ballsy, in a very very stupid kind of way

It takes a certain amount of cojones to stand up in a supposedly democratic, liberal country, and say you're going to emulate China.

If it catches on us commentards would be out of a pasttime. We often like to draw comparisons between a policy being proposed now and a similar policy that worked very badly in the past - but what's the point if politicians start doing it for us? "We're going to make everyone in the country carry ID cards. Yes, just like Hitler."

Can't we give the man a certificate?

Seems harsh that you get dinged £300 for that, even if you are a permanent scrounger and only left the Nazis after you got booted out for a failed putsch. Surely someone should redress the balance. "On behalf of all British non-Aryans and their friends and loved ones (i.e. virtually the entire population of Britain), we present this certificate and cheque for £300 to Mr Singlet, for performing the only action of his entire life that has any value whatsoever."

Insist on the presentation ceremony being conducted by the local rabbi, and I think it's a safe bet the cheque would remain undrawn anyway.