I didn't quite catch that...

T’other day, when TLG was over, we thought we’d head into town. And, knowing her fondness for shops, I thought that we’d drive in along the Lisburn Road.

This may not have been the best plan, because a little while later, we were doing U-turns in the middle of the road and heading sharpish away from flying objects and swiftly moving Tangis.

This may not have impressed TLG, upon looking back, but at least I could say that it was nothing to do with Norn Iron issues specifically, it was just football related twattery.

Maybe I’d not get away with that over this…

Suspected IRA dissidents have hijacked and burnt cars in Catholic parts of Belfast, police in Northern Ireland have said.

Ah, Belfast. The smell of burning lorries, the sight of groups of suspiciously idle young men with covered faces, the friendly warnings from traffic nearby, and the inconvenience of having to check that your front bumper wasn’t melted by passing within six inches of said lorry…

It must be springtime already…

Isn’t it terribly amusing that Jacqui Smith, our illustrious and hideously incompetent Minister for the Home Department, has been caught claiming for her husbands porn? Well, obviously, the hilarity lessened by the way that it’s our money she’s wasting, but still…

There’s quite the scandal over it all; apparently the husband has been given a right rollocking over it, and there are accusations of Tory ‘moles’ being behind the leak. Which is all a diversion from the thing that really annoys me.

Jacqui Smith has a salary of £141,866. From the public purse, she awards her husband a salary of £40,000 as a parliamentary advisor. As head of the internal security ministry, her security is paid for entirely by the state, so the one big expense incurred by her job isn’t paid for by her.

As a couple, then, Smith and Timney ‘earn’ a salary of £181,866. Why the fuck do they get away with claiming residential broadband on expenses, then? That’s what this is – no business broadband package throws in a free TV service and no secure government connection does either. As someone who holds a very sensitive position, I can’t imagine that she’s allowed to use a residential broadband connection to connect to the Home Office network.

So we pay this couple rather handsomely to do a piss poor job, and they have the cheek to claim for shitloads of things that have no bearing on their job at all. And yet the scandal is that they spent less than a tenner on porn, as opposed to the countless hundreds that they waste in other ways.

Something just isn’t right with that scenario.

This day last year, I got up ridiculously early. For the first time in several years, I boarded a plane from Belfast to Birmingham, with the aim of going out and getting rather inebriated in the old Union. There had been a fair amount o fuss in getting there; accommodation was hard to come by and the tickets weren’t exactly cheap.

But I got there, and had the fun job of sitting there for hours before anyone else got there because I was the only one bound by airline schedules. So I had a wonder about the campus, seeing the things that had changed and the things that were still the same. And then some of my group turned up, and we had a few beverages and slipped back into undergrad mode. And all was well.

For some reason, I remember a hell of a lot about that day. Because, y’see, it was later on that evening that something rather nice happened. In the building in which I spent many many drunken nights, and in which we spent many hours working together, one of my best friends went from being ‘just a friend’ to being The Lovely Girlfriend.

It’s been a pretty damn fine year, and she’s a pretty damn fine woman.

Happy Anniversary, beautiful.

Unfortunately, I’ll not be in the house at 8.30pm this evening, but if I was I would have every light on, I would have the car running, I would leave the fridge open and the oven would be running.

Just because I’m not a fan of wankish statements of right-on-ness, really. And because I’m a fairly thran bugger.

I really do dislike the cult of Apple. I dislike the smugness, and I dislike the conformist nature of the produce.

That’s not to say that I’m a fan of Microshaft, but if you’re left with a choice of Apple ads and MS ads, guess which one I’d go for…

I do like the line in the middle: “I’m not cool enough to be a Mac person.”

I’m not either. But then I never was cool, and I’m quite happy with being that way.

The Israelis seem to have a problem. When it comes to things happening right next door to them (or within their borders, depending on how you think the Holy Land should be divvied up), their intelligence looks a bit swamped. Too much going on to keep a track of, which means that when they do go and do anything they make many, many mistakes. And the mistakes that they make tend to be of the sort that leave civilians dead.

However, when they go a little further afield, they either have better intelligence or they have a much higher standard of proof before they do anything. They did it with Osirak, they did it a couple of years ago in Syria, and now apparently they’ve done it in Sudan.

A Sudanese government minister has confirmed reports of an air raid in eastern Sudan earlier this year.
…
The CBS television network said it had been told by American officials that a strike by Israeli planes in January had succeeded in preventing weapons from Sudan reaching Gaza.

That’s quite a mission; that’s the whole of Egypt and a fair whack of Sudan to fly; they must have had a plenty good tip off. Which would be backed up by the way that Sudan haven’t said much about it….

(Yes, I know this is very boring to everyone, but things like this have always interested me. So I’ll keep on musing on it if it’s all the same…)

I suppose I’m a very lucky man. I have me a family about the place that does a lot to look after me; in return I try to do my bit to look after my family. When my grandmother had a heart attack my mum and dad moved back into the house with her, and stayed there for 20 years. When my great-uncle retired, he moved into the house with my uncle. It’s what we do.

This is probably one of the things that shapes my opinion of the job of the state. My family has done for me so many of the things that people would rather have done for them by the state, because it would appear that many families don’t work the way mine does. I think that the state should be there to pick up the slack after a person’s individual safety net has failed, not before it.

Which is why I think that this is fucking awful idea.

Charity Grandparents Plus has called for big changes in the way grandparents who look after their grandchildren while the parents are at work are treated.

Payments through tax credits and “granny holidays” if they are in work are just two of the suggestions made in a report.
…
She said: “I would like to see some sort of legislation whereby grandparents are recognised and given the same sort of remuneration as foster parents because we’re doing the same sort of job.”

So grandparents should receive money from the state and subsidy from employers because they look after their grandkids? That’s plenty damn fucked up. If grandparents and parents come to some arrangement to look after kids, then that is between them. If the grandparents feel they should be compensated (and they likely should), it’s up to the parents to do that. It’s not fostering, because to do that the grandparents have to have taken the child from the parents legally. And if they want to do that, if they want to bring that amount of law into their relationships with their own children, then I pity all three generations…

Politicians have been talking for some time about how the ‘economic downturn’ is going to make the streets a little less safe and cause an increase in crime.

Well, aren’t they the fucking prophets?

And like all good prophets, they’re not above creating a situation where their predictions become more likely. Like, for example, stirring up public hatred and anger towards a man who broke no law. Then they can sit back while said man comes under attack.

The Edinburgh home of former Royal Bank of Scotland boss Sir Fred Goodwin was attacked by vandals overnight.

Windows were smashed and a Mercedes S600 car parked in the driveway was vandalised.

Oh, aren’t they prescient? But here’s the thing: they seem to be attempting to enliven the mob and point them towards easy prey. Not realising that the mob, once awakened, cannot be easily guided. They could as easily turn on the people who actually caused the problem, and that would be very messy for the politicians involved…

Here’s a not to those mutherfucking, useless, spineless, amoral twats in government: free speech is not a proviso. Nor is it a loophole, nor is it an inconvenience. It is not something to be worked around when specifying those about whom we can’t make jokes or those opinions that we may voice.

Free speech is an absolute right, one that has been sadly neglected by Westminster for many years. It is something that governments have to learn to live with, not something that we should learn to live without.

Also: I really wish that the government would stop fucking using one badly written law to amend their previous badly written law from the previous year. How about doing the job properly first time out, eh?

Boo. Galactica is over; it is no longer to be; it has shuffled off its mortal coil and run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible.

And I’m OK with that. It went out before it would have had to be pushed out. It tidied up just enough loose ends to leave me happy, but left enough unanswered to avoid being overly drawn out and convoluted. It avoided the mistake that I think Sopranos made, but left enough to the imagination to be a fitting ending.

In short: on my first viewing of the ending, I think that the best TV show of the 21^st century had a fitting end. And it would appear that el Reg agrees…

A little bit of spoilage follows:
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The US Bill of Rights is generally held up as the best (so far) example of such things. It has enumerated a good number of rights, it’s lasted a couple of centuries and most of the rights are surprisingly relevant today, given the issues that were current in 1789.

There are other such things, but few of them were as succinct as the above. And few of them are as famous outside their own land. Some are successful, and some of them are lasting.

There is, apparently, to be a new attempted addition to this list, but I suspect that it’ll be neither successful or lasting. Because of the way they’re going about making it.

Justice Secretary Jack Straw has said the government’s planned Bill of Rights will define the UK’s “common values”.

He suggested that entitlements to free healthcare and education could be added to rights such as trial by jury and free speech.

Launching a new consultation paper, he told MPs that people’s responsibilities also had to be defined “explicitly”.

Note to the Demon Headmaster: NO THEY FUCKING DON’T, because if you produce an exhaustive list of rights, then the state will eventually decide that the populace don’t have any rights except those which are on the list. Which would, to my mind, be a bad thing.

Even if I did grant that such a list should be drawn up, the best way to arrive at it would certainly not be a ‘consultation paper’; nobody except dumb-ass activist charities and think tanks actually offers opinions, and they have a nasty habit of talking absolute wank.

Also: I’m not massively keen on those fucktards in Westminster telling me what my responsibilities are. Because they have a responsibility to provide leadership by example, and they’re not fucking doing it – they’re busy cheating, lying, thieving, bullying and in general doing things that would get the average citizen a nice stay at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. How they can get around to telling us what we shouldn’t be doing with tiny sums of money when they’re busy wasting billions?

In short, these people are the worst possible people to tell us what we should do, and they’re going the wrong way about finding out what they should be telling us, and they’re not likely to come up with anything sensible. So let’s stop now and save us a few quid, eh?

In order from Friday evening:

1. Had a very nice meal for a sibling’s big birthday;
2. Slept far too little;
3. Enjoyed the tender ministrations of Mr O’Leary’s vehicle of discomfort;
4. Drank a little too much;
5. Ran through far too much of London town after point 4 and trying to get back to TLG’s in time to carry out point 6;
6. Watched the Ireland game, and the remembered to breathe again after that final penalty missed;
7. Went to a wedding, and continued with point 4;
8. Repeated point 2;
9. Texted the mother to wish her a happy hallmark holiday;
10. Watched some random Dave Gorman DVD. He’s quite funny, you know;
11. Talked a fair bit of shite and generally lazed about with TLG;
12. Repeated point 3;
13. Was entertained by some dipshit on said vehicle went apeshit because someone had the gall to tell her off for using her phone on final approach. Note to said dipshit: if flying scares you that much, please do the world a favour and use the fucking ferry next time…
14. Got home, and went to bed in an attempt to make up for points 2 and 8.

So, how about the rest of you? Anything fun to report?

Ireland did rather well yesterday, didn’t they? So well that my head is still a little bit sore…

… plus c’est la même chose.

It really wouldn’t be Formula 1 if there wasn’t a last minute panic, would there? If it isn’t a team collapsing, it’s a rule changing three times in the month before the season changes. It it isn’t a driver breaking contract, it’s a circuit being dropped because someone called Bernie short.

Formula 1 has axed plans for a new scoring system in 2009, just nine days before the start of the season.

The sport’s governing body, FIA, announced earlier this week that the driver with the most wins would be crowned world champion.

But following a protest from F1 teams, FIA says it will defer the introduction of the new system until 2010.

This one seems to be a storm in a teacup, but I’m sure that there’ll be something else along on the subject. After all, there’s a whole week to go before the first race gets underway, and the only thing that never changes in Formula 1 is that the FIA never quite seem to have gotten all the agreements that they thought they had before they make a sweeping change…

Oh dear. Young Gordon is still going round, blaming the current economic FUBAR on the evil banks, and the silly Americans. And he’s claiming that he rode to the rescue with the steps he took.

It would appear that he failed to do anything to stop the banks he ‘saved’ from doing the things that he claims caused the crisis.

From the BBC:

The Treasury has been criticised for allowing Northern Rock to lend £800m in risky mortgages for six months after it was propped up with taxpayers’ cash.

The National Audit Office report on the Treasury’s handling of the crisis found the bank was still giving mortgages of up to 125% in early 2008.

So, once HMG handed over a few billion quid to Northern Rock, a billion of it went straight out the front door in loans that were likely to be in massive difficulty almost immediately. Who the fuckedy fuck thought that was a good idea, eh?

Gordon Brown: burning your money with nothing to show for it, since 1997.

Asketh Auntie Beeb: Should ski helmets be compulsory?

Replieth this fella: Hell no.

It is, of course, tragic that someone has died. It is tragic that they’ve lost their life while indulging in a seemingly innocuous pass time. It is tragic that they’ve left behind a family who’ll be lost without them.

However, it does not mean that laws and/or rules should be brought in. I’ll wager that more people die of head injuries in car accidents in the UK every month than die due to head injuries skiing worldwide in a year. You might as well tell cross country runners to wear helmets.

The helmet thing in skiing perplexes me. I used to go skiing every year up until about ’97, and I can’t remember ever seeing anyone wearing a helmet outside of specialist nutjob freestyle competitions. When I went back to the slopes at the start of ’07, all of a sudden maybe one in ten were wearing them. Where did these hundred, nay thousands of folk come from? Did they look at competition skiing and think that they were in the same league as the competitors? Did they look at the odds and decide that they were the one in a million that would benefit from it?

Bah. The way I see it, unless you’re going to be doing something absolutely bonkers (cliff jumping, downhill racing for X-game style tricks), a helmet is just something that’ll give you a false sense of security. And thusly it should be left at home, with the motorcycle…

21^st Century politics 101: Gordon Brown never has once had a good idea.

21^st Century politics 102: The harder Gordon Brown pushes an idea, the worse an idea it is.

21^st Century politics 103: Other people only copy Gordon Brown’s ideas when they’re truly up shit creek without a paddle.

Clearly, the US Federal Reserve didn’t attend the above politics course.

The US Federal Reserve says it will buy almost $1.2 trillion (£843bn) worth of debt to help boost lending and promote economic recovery.

It said it would start buying long-term government debt and expand purchases of mortgage-related debt.

The size of the move surprised investors, causing the Dow Jones stock index to jump almost 200 points.

The Bank of England has already begun buying government debt to expand money supply – known as quantitative easing.

Oh dear. The US is just going to start printing money. Excuse me while I check the long range scanners. Ah yes, inflation ahoy…

This can only end badly.

We are now one episode away from the end of the best TV series to come out of the 21^st Century; one episode away from finding out what happens to the crew and hulk of Battlestar Galactica.

I’m almost disappointed by the way that so much is being tidied up; there appear to be very few openings left for sequels or follow-ups, and thus far I’ve not been left with any sense of anyone acting out of character. I’m almost looking forward to the end, which is certainly a new experience for me when it comes to my favoured television shows.

T-6 days until the final three hours of BSG. I can’t wait. Expect to be bored silly with details and discussion when the time comes around…

Tax evasion, the act of using illegal methods to minimise the tax you pay, is illegal.

Tax avoidance, the act of working within the law to minimise the tax you pay, is legal. In fact, it is not only legal, but both morally and fiscally responsible.

So why the flippedy fuck are HMRC “investigating” allegations of tax avoidance at Barclays? They’re investigating looking for evidence of people obeying the law?

Nice to see that they’re proving my point: government should be given the minimum money possible lest they waste it doing stupid things like this…

It’s rare for someone with views like mine to look at a politician and think “they get it”. Politics doesn’t seem to really attract too many people who realise that government is a big part of the problem, and that the solution is for many things is not government action, but government inaction.

In fact, the only person in UK mainstream politics who has ever got close to that is one David Davis, who is well known for striking away from party lines in the direction of libertarianism. Yes, he has a few daft ideas but he seems to be largely on the side of the angels. I would say that he gets it.

So imagine my surprise t’other when I heard on the radio the following:

Conservative MP David Davies has called on abusive protests against serving military personnel to be outlawed.

The Monmouth MP has tabled an amendment to a bill governing religious hatred that would extend protection to the Armed Forces.

It would make it an offence to incite hatred against serving soldiers.

Aw fuck, thought I, he doesn’t get it at all. So that’s 646 MPs, not one with a clue. Balls

However, upon further investigation, it’s not that bad. It’s a different Conservative MP called David Davies who thinks that making protest illegal is sensible. So it’s only 645 MPs who have not a clue, meaning that nearly 0.2% of MPs don’t make me scared for the future.

Do you think that David Davis will take David Davies to one side and explain to him that just because you find something distasteful doesn’t mean that it should be illegal? Morals and morality shouldn’t transpose to laws and legality, for you new know who’ll find your actions immoral in the future…