I didn't quite catch that...

So, the Uberstamführer-in-waiting has decided that immigrants should be made to volunteer.

Now, call me ignorant, but surely being made to volunteer negates the word volunteering. Perhaps he means drafting, or dragooning, or press-ganging.

Of course, the problem is not that Gordon is using the wrong word; the problem is that we misunderstand. According to some random Labour MP who was trotted out on FiveLive last night, it would still be volunteering, because nobody is forced into seeking to become an citizen of the country. Much in the same way as the ID card would be voluntary, because nobody needs a passport.

Aside from the obvious language differences between me and the Heir Presumptive, I’m still at a loss as to why he thinks this would be a good thing. There’ll be resentment, there’ll be scapegoating, there’ll be a massive amount of red-tape needed to run the whole thing. And there could very well be a change in demographic of people seeking citizenship: some of those nasty, selfish, rich, income-generating people may decide that they can’t be arsed. Which would be a bad thing, clearly.

But it got Gordon’s name in the papers, and not for reasons of sleaze or incompetence. So it’s clearly a plus for him.

Because being a fuckwit is slightly better than being corrupt. Slightly

Gordon Brown… lowering tax?

Gordon Brown, The UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, will announce in his March 21 budget a lowered tax rate of two-three per cent for online gaming companies to be licensed in the UK, the Daily Telegraph reports.

This suggests one of three things:

1. Gordon is beginning to realise that tax income can increase by encouraging growth by lowering taxes. It’s a beneficial cycle.
2. Gordon is panicking that any and all gambling firms will just up and leave the UK, do all their business online and live in Gibraltar.
3. Gordon is doing his best to change his image from the dour, spend-like-a-drunken-sailor, form loving tosspot that he is. Because he’s apparnetly going to try and become some for of leader.

Only two out of three may apply. And the odds suggest that numero uno is the rank outsider.

Regarding the increase in summary punishments for using mobiles while driving, I’d like to restate the issues I raised when the offence was first introduced.

1. If it is so dangerous for people to use a communication device while driving, why is OK for the police, ambulance service, fire service, taxi companies, truckers, etc to use semi-duplex radios, which require repeated hand movements, as opposed to phones which stay connected until disconnected?
2. The police have always had the power to punish drivers who are seen to be careless, inconsiderate, drunk, dangerous or any number of different conditions. Why make it specificially illegal to use a phone when there already exist powers to catch those whose driving is impaired by the use of a phone? Unless it’s just to make life easier for police. There’s a name for a country where everything is made easy for the police. And it’s not a good one.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. My job, as a citizen/subject, is not to change my habits to make life easier for agents of the state to perform their duties. It is the job of the state to work around the habits of the citizenry in the carrying out of their duties.

Civil servant, remember. One who serves, not one who lords it over. We need to get back to basics on that description.

Some time ago, the Powers That Be at Belfast International Airport stopped people from using the set down area to pick people up, instead sending them into a small car park that was free for ten minutes. This, at the time, seemed sensible, although I was pretty confident that, bastards being bastards the world over, this ‘free car park’ would be dropping a fairly major adjective fairly quickly.

Oh look, I was right.

The car parks at Aldergrove are operated by Q-Park, which has now scrapped the free parking period.

It says people picking up passengers will now be able to park for up to 30 minutes for a fee of £1.00.

The move has angered the Consumer Council – it says the free parking period should have been extended to half an hour, not cut altogether.

Now, I would generally be of the opinion that a commercial entity can do what they like, as long as it’s legal. If they want to charge for parking, it’s their call. But BIA isn’t a clean case like that: they have their own police force, they have (and have used) the pull to get the DoE to block any on-road parking nearby, they can (and have) redesign the local road network to make it extremely difficult to loiter. Which is especially annoying given how much free space there is nearby: many small roads that are closed for security reasons are crying out to be parked on, and the hard shoulders and verges are ideal for parking.

So the airport is a commercial entity; it just has the resources of the state dancing to it’s tune. Which annoys me. And this is why I’ll be damaging Gaia a lot by doing laps, instead of parking. I’ll be damned if they get more money out of me than is absolutely necessary.

I am spectacularly useless when it comes to doing anything with photos; this should be obvious from the fact that I’d been on flickr for something like 18 months without loading a single photo onto it.

But anyway… I was recently supplied with a CD of pictures taken during the recent holiday, so I figured that some of them could do with being uploaded. And so I’ve done that.

See? I was there. Also, in thinking about it, that is the longest my hair has been in about five years. Damn unkempt, that’s what it is…

A nice quote from the http://economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8746347:

… road pricing has become a national talking-point in the past few weeks. People from Jeremy Clarkson (a skilful propagandist for the motoring lobby) to Labour MPs have lined up to criticise official plans for a nationwide tolling scheme, perhaps requiring the use of monitoring devices within cars…

Yes, that’s exactly what he is: he’s a spin doctor who manipulates his message to make his point; he’ll quite happily talk bullshit to further his agenda; he’ll insult the beards of those who disagree with him.

And he’s bloody good at it. And he’s on the side of the angels. Thusly, we are in favour of his propaganda. And don’t forget, he spews forth most of his propaganda on the same media outlet that most obviously is deserving of his wrath. Marks for effort, marks for message, marks for style and marks for sheer bare faced cheek. Full marks all round.

Speaking of said evil propaganda, I’m assuming that you all enjoyed the whole show last evening. ’twas muchly entertaining, what with the schoolboy giggling over young Ms S-T and the gratuitous speed of the Lambo. Not quite sure what the Kestrel was there for, but it looked good, and that’s what matters…

You Are Incredibly Logical

Move over Spock – you’re the new master of logic You think rationally, clearly, and quickly. A seasoned problem solver, your mind is like a computer!

This confirms half of my well known self-diagnosis: plenty of logic, not a lot of common sense. Not sure how I’d go about confirming the other half, but someone will probably come up with a little netquiz for that in short order…

And let the hat be tipped in the direction of Chris. Ta muchly.

From the wikipedia entry for Studio 60:

As of February 17, 2007, Studio 60 had been pulled from NBC’s lineup to be replaced with The Black Donnellys starting February 26. No date has been set for its return.

Well, that’s something a little bit less than ideal. Because I actually quite like the damn show, even if a couple of the recent episodes were a little weak. Boo and hiss to the NBC suits.

Time, she is an annoying wench. Taking away abilities, and giving nothing but pain and grief.

This mickey mouse was brought to you by my head still being sore, many many hours after finishing drinking. Back in t’day, such pains would be gone by lunch, and the stomach would be asking for more right about now. Instead, I’m enjoying a hot orange and heading to bed.

alt=”found on t’internet”/>

Gah. Bring back the irresponsible youth. I miss it.

Apparently, there was a game of rugby at Croker a couple of weeks ago. Didn’t go so well. So let’s just forget all about it, and instead remember this game as the introduction of Irish rugby to the stadium.

Was a good result. I like.

As a lot of people may know, ntl (and the rest of that empire, including Virgin mobile, Telewest, Virgin’s ISP, etc) rebranded to Virgin Media. This became a big-ass player in the field of television production, television delivery, internet service provision, mobile phone provision, land line provision, and a slew of other things. It is one of the UK’s biggest phone companies (second in land lines after BT, and has a good few mobiles); it is the UK’s biggest provider of cable television; it is one of the biggest ISPs in the UK. It is not, in short, the small, fast, cheeky company that Virgin would have you believe. They are not the anti-establishment in any of these industries, they are firmly establishment.

Virgin has always annoyed me a little in their marketing; they are a massive company, worth many, many billions of pounds. They are not small players in any of their business areas. And yet they always claim to be the consumers champion, picking fights against the bigger companies. This has vexed me.

Now, they’re doing the same with their cable TV service. And it’s following the same pattern it always does: closed door negotiations, a breakdown in said negotiations, and then Virgin come out shouting about how they’re the only ones to ever stand up for the consumer, and they’re just not like the big opposition (be it BA, Vodafone, BskyB, whatever). It would be believable, if it didn’t happen every time they moved into a new business area.

And the upshot of it is that there is currently a lot of brinkmanship between Sky and Virgin over SkyOne. Massive pre-emptive attack speeches by Virgin, ads taken out by BskyB, handbags in the press between them. And it currently looks like VIrgin won’t be showing SkyOne in a couple of weeks.

This really annoys me. I mentioned yesterday that there were a good few USian shows that I really enjoyed; most of them are shown on SkyOne. Battlestar Galactica, the Stargates, 24, Lost and Rescue Me are all exclusive to Sky. And they’re all on my list of must-haves. So, hopefully, this little spat will be sorted out, otherwise my downloading will get extremely heavy.

Would this be enough to make me change provider? Probably; BSG would be nearly enough on it’s own to get me to do so. And Sky+ would be nice… But I’ve been happy enough with my ntsmell service, and I don’t particularly want to change, and I don’t like having to change my habits because of dickheadery in corporate circles.

Damn and blast them. Change is bad, as I’ve often said. And someone else changing makeing me change is doubly bad.

A wee while back, Ryan at Up Your Ego asked the following question:

American television networks are getting set to unveil their big new shows soon, a time of year that is massively important for the broadcasters as it’s when they attract advertisers, give people a sign of things to come and set the tone for the televisual year ahead.

So why are some of the bigger shows set to launch either re-makes of well known British shows or feature British talent including actors, directors and writers? Have the Americans run out of ideas or is British television THAT much better?

As I said over there, I consider that the time when UK TV could be said to be any better than US TV has long gone. Both countries spend far too much time and money on absolute shite; redundant reality TV is all over the place; the norm on both sides of the Atlantic is equally low.

But the highs on the far side of The Pond are much higher and more numerous than over here. I’d say that there are three highs for me on UK broadcasting, in all genres: Top Gear, Life on Mars and Spooks. From t’other side, in the same timeframe, there’s Sopranos, West Wing, Studio 60, 24, Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis. UPDATE: And House, which I shamefully forgotted. Dagnabbit.

Things that aren’t as high, but still worth a watch: from the UK, Dragon’s Den. From the US: Rescue Me, CSI:Miami, CSI:NY, NCIS and Heros.

Even in the areas where the UK used to stand alone (documentaries and natural world stuff), National Geographic makes more that the BBC ever could, and does it to the same standard. The only thing that I think the UK is doing better in is the panel game: Buzzcocks, QI, HIGNFY and Mock the Week are far better than their US cousins. Even if that’s just because their jokes are more relevant.

If UK TV was ever better, it is definitely not now. ‘course, Ryan is a shameless apologist for the Beeb, so what can we expect him to say… ;p

This post was inspired by last night’s Rescue Me. One of the finest non-headliner shows about. Tommy Gavin is one of the most interesting characters on TV at the moment. Plus, Leary is damn funny.

Politics over here has always been a strange affair. Labels like Left and Right, liberal and statist, high tax and low tax, they don’t mean a lot. For the simple reason that most people have their own feeling on Unionist/Nationalist and vote accordingly. This has meant that, for example, lefty unionist-types ended up voting for a party that sat with the Tories in Westminister, and that fiscally-conservative nationalists voted for the decidedly lefty SDLP or SF.

It also meant that politicians didn’t have to bother with a centre ground: they fought on the Union, and expected the voters to fall in behind them. Depressingly enough, we always have.

There’s always been a centre ground; a shitload of people who wanted to keep their money in their pocket; or to spend lots of other people’s money on themselves. But their voice has always been drowned out by the traditional tribal squabbling.

But, ladies and gentlemen, this is the age of internet activism; of webtwopointzero. So why not use this new tool to see if we can’t draw out the old tools: get the politicians to actually get round to making stands on the issues that matter, in print.

And if they won’t, then why doesn’t a place exist where we can note what they’ve said. Strip out the rhetoric, and get their facts down on paper, where others can come, read it, and then decide how to vote?

Ladies and gentlemen, the internet has forced US politicians to change their methods in the 2004 and ‘06 elections. It has moved UK politicians into podcasting. Surely it can drag our lot out of the 70s.

And someone has made a start. This could be very, very interesting. Or it could all descend into MOPEry and the like, but here’s hoping…

I’m sure that everyone gets a bit of decent spam on their blogs these day. Whole botnets seem dedicated to pumping out thousands of comments that are destined to be deleted within hours of being made, and without ever being noticed by Google.

Some of them stand out a bit, of course. They resemble real comments enough that they require a personal delete rather than making up part of a mass comment grave.

And some of them are totally decidedly odd. Like the one I got today; bots, as a general rule, don’t show up in my SiteMeter logs; nor are they referred from a Gmail account; nor do they send an email (through my customed form, not my generic comment form).

So it was an actual person who wrote it, and they had the site pointed out to them by email. And they were here for a good few minutes, which means that it cost actual time and money to put it together.

Very strange.

Message: Hi! We came across your website recently and decided to take a look around. If you’ve ever wondered what more you can do to rank higher in Google, Yahoo and MSN (the big three) then we like to offer you some suggestions on how to increase traffic and ultimately increase sales on your website. Please feel free to call us at 91-32667726377 or by email at info@damnspammers.com.

Just take a look at some of recent rankings we achieved for different industries:

Google

Prescription Sunglasses %u2013 Page 1
Franchise Lawyer %u2013 Page 1
Bicycle Goggles %u2013 Page 1
Internet Marketing India %u2013 Page 1

We provide link building and content writing services at very nominal pricing

Sincerely Yours,

Mr Spammer
Senior Manager, Sales & Marketing
Damn Spammers Technology

http://www.damnspammers.com

info@damnspammers.com

I wish them well in their business case, but I don’t hold out a lot of hope…

Egypt blogger jailed for ‘insult’

An Egyptian court has sentenced an internet blogger to four years’ prison for insulting Islam and the president.

Now, I don’t go out of my way to insult Islam (’course, I don’t go out of my way not to insult it, either), but I have been know to express my extreme dislike of our Beloved Leader. And some of the less-than-complimentary things that I’ve said would probably land me in jail in quite a few countries in the world.

Luckily enough, I’m not in any of those countries, so I can quite happily say that Tony Blair is a lying, megalomaniacal, amoral piece of shit, and that the sooner he is consumed by a passing herd of scarabs, the better.

Just to let you in on a secret: I know that this isn’t a dictatorship; I know that it’s still one of the most ‘free’ nations out there. I am not advocating that the Glorious Day happen next Tuesday. I just think that we’re moving in the wrong direection: we could, and should, be moving towards more liberty. Instead we’re losing ground. This is not good.

A Belfast guy, a little man, was sitting at a bar in New York when this huge, burly American guy walks in. As he passes the little Belfast guy, he hits him on the neck knocking him to the floor. The big, burly Yank says,”That’s a karate chop from Korea .” Well, the little guy gets back on his bar stool and resumes drinking his beer.

The burly Yank then gets up to go to the bathroom and, as he walks by the wee Belfast man, he hits him on the other side of the neck and knocks him to the floor. “That’s a judo chop from Japan “, he says. The Belfast man decides he’s had enough and leaves.

A half hour later he comes back and sees the burly Yank b*stard sitting at the bar. He walks up behind him and smacks him on the head, knocking him out. The wee Belfast man says to the bartender, “When he wakes up mate, tell him that was a f*ckin’ crowbar from Ballymurphy.”

Why bother with a silly invader GPS, when it’s useless in this wee land. Sure what the hell would it do when you tell it to find a townland? Or when you need to get to the house with a green gate past the Cross Keys? Or when you need to get to Jimmy’s in Aghadooey, no not that Jimmy, Jimmy who’s married to yer wan from Ballintoy, remember the scandal when that happened, lovely child that they have though, pity about that horrible mess with the strimmer, but they cope well with it, I hear he’ll be joining the Civ this year, didn’t let it hold him back…

If that’s the kind of directions you need, then you need a JonJoe. Clearly powered by Citybeat Technologies.

Someone, somewhere in the writing staffs for the Stargate TV shows, has it in for the doctors.

‘course, thar be spoilers by them thar posts. Not much in the way of spoilage for SG1, unless you’ve not been watching since season 7, but much more recent for Atlantis.
More »

Ah, the Beloved Leader has deigned to respond to the 1.7 million people who don’t want road charging. With a missive of around 1,400 words, which could easily have been said in less than a dozen:

I don’t care what you think, we’re doing it anyway.

I particularly like the bit in the middle: We are, for now,
working with some local authorities that are interested in establishing local
schemes to help address local congestion problems. Pricing is not being forced on any area

So, clearly the good people of: Bristol, Cambridgeshire, Durham, Greater Manchester, Shrewsbury, Tyne & Wear, The West Midlands, Reading, Norwich, Nottingham, Leicester and Derby all volunteered, following a referrendum, or a massive public debate. I doubt it. More likely they were volunteered for it by a money hungry local politician, who didn’t really care what the actual people thought.

Where have I heard that before?

And further down: Before we take any decisions about a national pricing scheme, we know that we have to have a system that works.

Not really; if, say, it was decided today that we were not having a national pricing scheme, then we wouldn’t need to know anything about working systems. Because, you see, we would know that we didn’t need said systems, so their working would be a moot point. If, however, your decision has already been made, and it is for road pricing, then you need to know things like ‘does the system work’. Subtle difference.

But, as he is keen to point out, he hasn’t made his mind up yet. Honest.

The full thing follows, but it is a biggie:

More »

Images I did not need in my head, part 43:

* Enoch Powell throwin’ it up Shirley Bassey

This has been a public service announcement.