strange stuff

Nothing to hide ... plenty to fear

2009-11-24T16:27:00.000Z

The police are trawling for arrests, and thanks to Labour everything is arrestable, in order to fill up their DNA database. Accoring to the Times 'three quarters of young black men are on the database'! Almost all of whom will have done nothing wrong, but will still not be able to get their DNA off the database and now join the ranks of the 'guilty innocents' who are tainted by getting to close to the police. This can have serious repercussions, like this story of a high flying lawyer forced to work as a stable hand after she was sacked because she was on the database, despite doing nothing wrong.

Another step on the EU's path

2009-11-19T12:13:00.001Z

Just a little something for those that dispute the claim that the EU is steadily marching towards statehood.

The Queen's Speech

2009-11-18T10:55:00.001Z

Today is Gordon Brown's party political broadcast, oops I mean the Queen's Speech. In the past this was kept in such secrecy that leaking it could be a resigning matter. Not today though, and not just because no Labour Minister ever resigns for anything. This Queen's Speech has been so heavily trailed that it is perfectly possible to create a detailed critique of it even before it has been said and The Adam Smith Institute has done just that.

The War on Fish

2009-11-14T12:12:00.000Z

The EU's War on Fish continues. They won't give in until the oceans have been cleared of this flappy menace.

Piracy

2009-11-13T23:10:00.000Z

Posted from my phone, hence no spell check, however this story was rather more interesting than the rest that are circulating as Labour gasps its last autharitarian breaths. It was this rather depressing story about piracy on the high seas.

The crew of a UK military ship watched as a British couple were taken hostage by Somali pirates but were ordered not to open fire, it has emerged.

While an RFA it still had armed men on board (making it more powerful than the 'mighty' HMS Endevour that lefties often claim could scare off the entire Agentine military) and could at least scared them off.

Perhaps it could be something to do with this story from last year about how the Navy has been ordered not engage pirates because of the worries to do with the Human Eights Act.

What really is the point of having a blue water navy if it cannot protect our shipping? The reason that the USA formed it's navy was to protect American merchant ships from pirates, the operating base being Algeria rather than Somalia back then.

The Illiberal Conspiracy

2009-09-09T20:32:00.002Z

A couple bits from the Illiberal Conspiracy.

First: Why don't pensions critics attack the fat-cats? Because how a private business spends its money is its business, but how the public sector spends my money is my business, perhaps?

Second their 10 point plan to save Labour ... from ever winning office again. It shouldn't really be surprising anymore that the ironically titled 'liberal conspiracy' would promote something as illiberal as getting bureaucrats to control peoples wages, and more and higher taxes, plus the mass expropriation of wealth.

In a way that this hodge-podge of higher taxes and more state control is actually being promoted in connection to somebody that is a possibility for next Labour leader is a good thing. It means that they are going to lurch to the left so far that it will be at least a decade before they are in the least bit electable, and that means at more than a decade before the time that people can be held without charge will be increased.

Insanity

2009-08-28T15:15:00.000Z

ID Cards excuse de jour

2009-08-28T06:15:00.000Z

The excuse de jour for ID Cards is changing, again. This time it is to help with with CRB checks, or why won't somebody think of the chiiiiildren! Not that CRB checks are much more than a invasive tax on voluntary work with an alarmingly high false positive rate. If a mind probe existed Labour would probably make thinking about anybody under 18 illegal as well.

RACIST!!!

2009-08-27T17:57:00.001Z

The next election is going to be very very dirty. The left has run out of ideas, and when they run out of ideas they start screaming 'racist'. It is a handy way of shutting down the debate. It happened when Ken Livingstone lost. It is happening in the current froth over Dan Hannan. It is even used against rebels within their own ranks. It will happen at the next election, I can see it now.

His nose twitched, that means he is a secret racist!
He just pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his nose. He must want to wipe out cultural diversity the racist!!
He just put the handkerchief back in his pocket, that can only be code for wanting to lock up brown people without trial, forever!! RACIST!!!
What? Oh ... Labour already tried to lock up brown people forever without trial? Oh no, then that cannot be racist. It must actually have been a good thing ... to improve the cultural diversity of the prison population ... or something. But Cameron is on the right so he must actually be thinking something that really is evil, not something like locking brown people up forever without trial. Which is actually a good thing anyway.

That VAT Cut

2009-08-26T15:28:00.001Z

Colour me unsurprised. Labour's big idea to save the economy by cutting VAT actually had no effect to boast spending, just as was predicted last year. Perhaps if they had cut the Job Tax (National Insurance) instead it would have actually done something by saving marginal jobs and so leading to a few less people on the dole, but then people on the dole have long been a natural source of Labour votes and they are going to need as many as they can get next year.

There is no money left

2009-08-22T12:20:00.003Z

As Michael Ben-Gad, deputy head of economics at City University, so eloquently put it on Friday: "Whoever gets into government next will have to make very large cuts in services and also raise taxes. You'll end up with US levels of services and Scandinavian levels of tax."

When the Tories get in they will be cutting services, they will have to because there is no money left. So when that happens the lefties should remember that it is happening because there will be no money for services is as they had already spent it. They won't of course.

I Am The Law

2009-08-18T09:36:00.001Z

Labout are have a go at the right to a fair trial, again. Labour really don't like trials, especially jury trials, and have spent most of the last decade trying to get rid of them or nobble them to make sure that they give the correct answer. The correct answer being always GUILTY. Now there is at least some resistance to giving the police the power to instantly try and convict people on the streets from another part of the establishment. It only took ten years. Quite frankly why don't they just go the whole hog and change the name of London to Megacity One?

Labour porn

2009-06-16T23:35:00.001Z

Finally some evidence that at least somebody in the Labour Party did at one point have some ideas that were not an authoritarian overreaction about porn, though going too far on the other side to. Of course since then she got on board the Labour band wagon of banding people above the age of consent taking photos of their consensual fun, and with Labour's latest idea of banning fantasy images with no relation to reality at all, or the stupid 'extreme porn' law that they managed to get through and is already being abused.

Only the Lib-Dems can beat the Tories

2009-05-30T20:23:00.003Z

In an ICM poll for the Sunday Telegraph Labour have fallen to third place. The proportions are Conservative 40%, Labour 22%, Lib-Dem 25%. This could be a rogue, simply the result of random sampling error. It could be a blip, a short term reaction to the expenses scandal. Or it could be that the Lib-Dems have crossed the tipping point.

Under First Past the Post voting there is only space for two parties. Voters tend to be attracted to only one of two parties because even if the party that they vote for does not truly reflect their views it will keep the other lot out. That the Liberals have survived at all (which at times looked doubtful) was probably because they occupied the extremely important strategic ground at the middle of the political spectrum.

While under a uniform national swing this result would mean that the Lib-Dems are still the third party there is a chance that they could becoming the party to keep the other lot out for enough people, with the other lot being both Labour and the Conservatives, that they jump far above what a uniform swing predicts as people try to keep both the other main parties out. If that happens, if the Lib-Dems become the party to keep the other lot out, then suddenly the dynamics of the political environment change. This chaotic environment gets tipped out the equilibrium where people voted Labour to keep the Conservatives out and Conservative to keep Labour out, with the Lib-Dems ignored, to a new equilibrium where people vote Lib-Dem to keep the Conservatives out and vote Conservative to keep the Lib-Dems out. Kind of like how the Lorenz Attractor becomes a Repulsor when the variables are set over a certain threshold.

Labour would be reduced to a rump or hard core true believers on the left, and unlike the Lib-Dems, this would pull them further and further away from the vital centre ground so making them less and less likely to ever be a significant electoral force again. Or this poll might be a rogue.

The cost of a Labour government

2009-05-09T10:14:00.003Z

Of all of the things which came out from the expenses this is the worst. It is not simply damning to the individual involved, since unlike most of them it could be justified as something other than a greedy pig stuffing their pockets with other people's money, it is damning to the government as a whole and the way that they have lead this country. If a government minister has lost so much trust in the protection of the police that she feels it necessary to pay for her own private guards what does that say about how her government has let one of the few really necessary areas of government fall into rack and ruin.

The budget

2009-04-22T14:19:00.000Z

No surprises in the budget really. Taxes have increased, because Labour always increases taxes. The country is borrowing more, because Labour always spends more than it earns. The economy is on its knees, because in the end Labour always bankrupts the country. The only difference that unlike most of Gordon Brown's other budgets they are increasing direct taxes as well as the normal indirect taxes.

They have decided to squeeze the rich, where rich is defined as people earning more than a cabinet minister, with a 50% tax rate. That this will probably loose them money is irrelevant. It isn't about what is best for the exchequer, it is about what is best for the Labour Party and by attacking people that create wealth to try and motivate some its core vote to get off their arses and vote. There is nothing like a bit of envy and spite to motivate a lefty. What is another few of billion lost? It is merely the politics of envy. It isn't the big revenue raiser, nor is it meant to be. The big money is coming from yet further rises in fuel tax, because that is almost unavoidable by normal working people since most people have to drive in order to get to work. The only exceptions are those few that work in central London or have a chauffeur driven car paid for by their work, an MP for example.

There is no money but still there will be no spending cuts. Money is still going to be hosed up the wall in order to keep Labour's payroll vote fat. Even when the economy was growing strongly Labour could not fund their payroll vote from normal tax receipts and had to take the country deep into debt. This year as revenues fall we are going to have to go even deeper, that debt is set to rise to a level not seen since the defeat of Fascism (the last bunch of Third Way authoritarians to threaten this country with destruction).

The proposed tax rises are mere drop in the ocean of debt that has been forced upon us. This is debt that they are assuming that they will be able to raise from the gilts market. This despite there having already been a failed gilts auction this year. Maybe that is the reason why deflation is being touted around? It gives the government an excuse to print extra money to pay for its excesses. Which is absolutely nothing like what a tin pot dictatorship bent on its own destruction through hyper-inflation would do. Oh no, absolutely nothing like that ... really.

It is a good thing Brown managed to get world leaders to commit to putting more money into the IMF at the G20, because we are going to need it.

Personally there is one part of the budget that I will personally be taking advantage of. This is the scrappage payment of £2000. Getting rid of my old banger would be a good thing while my money is still worth anything. It will be a good thing for me to get something more reliable which is more fuel efficient since fuel is going to be taxed even more. I will, of course, be buying Japanese.

Slave Labour

2009-04-12T13:46:00.002Z

Labour wants to bring in child slave labour in order to reduce the costs of the ever expanding state.

Mr Brown said a promise to bring in compulsory community service would be a part of his next election manifesto.

Luckily this will be a manefesto that they will never implement. Cameron did promote something similar, but at least he didn't call for out and out slavery to the state. He just hinted at it instead. If either of them actually implements it they should paraded naked and chained to the site of an ancient slave market and publicly auctioned off with the highest bidder getting to flog them to death on a sugar plantation.

Problems in Ireland

2009-04-12T13:05:00.002Z

The ECB is willing to sacrifice Ireland for the Greater Good of the Euro, good thing that we didn't get pushed into it. This should also mean that it will be harder for the political establishment to win the Lisbon Referendum second round, so maybe Ireland's sacrifice will to the UK some good as well. The Irish themselves however are up the creek and have had their paddles taken away by the EU.

Gordon Brown, Economic Genius

2009-04-10T14:52:00.000Z

There is a lot that you can complain about of Gordon Brown, an aweful lot, but with the joys of spring bursting around me I decided to see if I could think of anything good to say about him instead. It turns out that there is.

Firstly thanks to Gordon Brown being in the treasury for the past decade we are probably in a better place now than if he had not been there. Yes the country is bankrupt, but this is a Labour government and that always happens under a Labour government. Yes he has spent far too much on the Labour payroll vote with nothing to show for it, but again this is Labour so there was no way around that. However had Gordon not been chancellor, and a chancellor with enough power to say 'No' to the Prime Minister, it is almost certain that Tony Blair would have lead us into the Euro. Had we been in the Euro then the country would still be bankrupt, Labour would still have spent billions bribing their payroll vote, but the interest rates would have been a point or two lower for the last decade and if you want to now what that would mean just look at Ireland or Spain.

One of the reasons for the current recession is the bursting of a ginormous property bubble. Had we been in the Euro the property bubble would have been that much bigger, due to the lower interest rates, and so would the bust. Also being outside the Euro it means that the value of the currency can float downwards, as it has. This imports inflation so removing the risk of debt-deflation, exactly as happened during the Great Depression and why the UK escaped that relatiely well, and reduces the prices of our exports so making them more competitive and helping to price us back into the market. We are not in the Euro and for that we should heartily thank Gordon.

Secondly he has bankrupted the country. There is no money left. This means that whatever they want to do the incoming Conservative government is going to have to cut back on the size of the state, they have no choice in the matter. Over the last decade the size and intrusive nature of the state has grown and grown, but it has grown based on putting the costs onto the nations credit card. Now that card is maxed out and the money needs to be repaid. The size of the state has to be trimmed anyway, because a smaller state is a better state, but now there is actually a chance that it will be trimmed simply because there is no money to keep paying for its current bloated excess. For that too we can thank Gordon Brown.

He didn't mean to do either of these things. Staying out of the Euro was simply a way of putting one over Tony Blair so he could get the 'credit' later. Nor he did not inflate the size of the state to make it go pop, it was because he is a statist that equates spending money with doing good. However the results, staying out of the Euro and setting up the conditions for shrinking the state, will aid this country in the long run.

Somebody is watching you

2009-04-06T16:45:00.001Z

If you notice your ISP bill joining the long list of things with higher prices then there is a simple reason why. All of your data is now being stored by the ISP so that any busy-body quangocrat can browse through it in order to get some tips for new porn movies to put on their expenses.

As you would expect this legislation comes from Brussels, but it is not soley the creation of the EU. It is the EU is being used as a democracy by-pass mechanism by Labour, again, so that they can create authoritarian legislation, again, which will penalise the law abiding while doing nothing at all to hinder the microscopic fraction of the population that do serious crime, again.

Were the EU in itself more democratic then perhaps just maybe this legislation might just possibly have been stopped by protests to our representatives there (ha ha), but it isn't. Were Labour not the most authoritarian government that this country has ever had maybet they would not have proposed it, but they are, and if they held the veiws of the population in anything but contempt then maybe they would have sent it through Westminster rather than Brussels, but they do.

Is there anything that can be done? No, there isn't. What about getting rid of Labour post-haste and having some other party repeal this legislation? No, they cannot since having been sent through the EU it is now impervious to the wishes of the British government. There is no way that this legislation can be reversed by Westminster and it is now lost in the quagmire of supra-national politics. Short of leaving the EU, though a good thing in itself, we are stuck with it. That is not to say that people shouldn't vote for almost anybody that stands a chance of getting Labour out. Other than ID cards, which Labour also tried to encase in EU armour, I don't expect them to do much about any of the piles of authoritarian crap that Labour have dumped onto the country for the last decade, but at least they might not add to it as quickly as another Labour administration would. It might not be great but given the electoral system it is the only option available.

Labour with its obsession with databases does not seem to understand the concept of the signal to noise ratio. They think that more data is always better, not understanding that more data could well make finding the data that they are interested in harder to find because you have to wade through more meaningless non-sense to get to it. Rather like attempting to read any of their legislation. For anybody that wants to increase their personal noise levels here is a basic bit of Python 3.0 code which will open random HTTP connections and then shut them again. It will only try once every 10 seconds so shouldn't hog your bandwidth, but it should help fill their logs with noise.

import time
from random import randint
from urllib import request

while True:
    try:
        f = request.urlopen("http://" + ".".join(map(str, [randint(0,255) for x in range(4)])))
        f.close()
    except:
        pass
    time.sleep(10)

Smith's porno bill is going up

2009-03-31T22:21:00.003Z

One good thing has come out of the Jacqui Smith pornothon affair, a good thing for Jacqui Smith's husband at least. Apparently she was so furious that she has expelled him from the marital bed, so he will now be sleeping on the sofa. Which he must be very grateful for. No more gurning monster and more time tucked up in front of the television to spending intimate moments with somebody he truly loves: himself. I wonder if they put the tissue paper on expenses as well?

Labour's Porn Problem

2009-03-30T17:50:00.002Z

I didn't write much about the last Labour sex sandal other than to say I felt it was a private affair. This one is different. Jack Boots Jaqui's better half was found buying porn on her expenses account. He was using our money to indulge in something that Labour has shown itself only too ready to try and regulate with idiotic laws that could make the likes of Watchmen illegal. The problem is not that he was wanking off to porn of course. Quite frankly if it was masturbation or sex with Jacqui-Boots Smith so can you really blame him? Who would really want to stick it into that diseased and putrid hole. That they were ever able to spawn is a surprise. Having her sweating visage gurning at him must have made him thin he had accidentally switched from his porno channel and onto the horror. Perhaps he normally takes her from behind? It would avoid the need to look and anal would certainly be a cleaner and more healthy option than the front entrance, and there might even be some chance of touching the sides by doing it that way. Jerk off all you want but an MPs salary should be able to satisfy for most pornographic needs, or perhaps Mr Timney (he didn't want to have the same name as her, and you cannot blame his for that as well. Personally I'm not keen on having to share oxygen with the bitch) is in need of some more specialist stimulation: Barely legal, barely living, or given who he married, barely human? Or all three? Perhaps we now know the real reason behind the Labour anti-porn crusade. It isn't about enforcing their own puritanical morality on others, it is about trying to pry other halves away from the porn so as they might actually get some kind of a desperation fuck once in a while. Either way their hypocrisy is as rank as Mrs Smiths fetid and scabrous vagina.

Inflation is coming

2009-03-26T17:22:00.001Z

Looks like I'm not the only person that thinks that the threat of deflation is bunkum, a spectre conjured up in order to let the government get away with delivering a huge inflationary spike to inflate away its massive debts. The collective judgement of the bond markets appear to agree with me. After yesterdays failed auction of normal gilts, which failed, today there was an auction of inflation linked gilts, which was a roaring success. Clearly there are a lot more people out there worried about the future inflationary impact of Labour's policies than the MSM would have us believe.

Dan Hannan

2009-03-24T19:15:00.003Z

Here, via Guido is a speech of Dan Hannan ripping into Gordon Brown over the financial disaster that his reign has resulted in.

Only one small problem Mr Hannan says that Gordon Brown was the author of the phrase "British jobs for british workers", actually Brown simply lifted it from the BNP and popularized it. Not the only policy that Labour has in common with the Fascists but even they would probably balk at legislating so as to be able to lock up brown people forever without a proper trial as Labour did with the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001.

The end of the world is not nigh

2009-03-24T17:53:00.002Z

After years of being neglected RPI is suddenly the flavour of the month when it comes to inflation rates, because unlike before when CPI was the value that showed the lowest inflation rate now RPI does. RPI has even gone to 0% which is causing howls that the end is nigh and deflation stalks the earth.

If they are so worried about deflation then the answer is simple, stop causing it. The only reason why RPI inflation is currently 0% is because of the massive reductions in interest rates that have happened over the last year. The costs of everything else is still going up steadily, and at above the target rate, with CPI inflation at 3.2% and RIPX at 2.5%. Both of these measures were up on last month.

The reduction in RPI will certainly be used as an excuse to debauch the currency by printing money and so ramping up inflation even further. Printing money is the stealthiest of all the stealth taxes, in numerical terms it will not even reduce the number of pounds that you have in your bank account: it will simply make the value of each vanish. However this hard earned value did not simply disappear. For as much value is wiped from the savings of the prudent the same amount is also wiped from the debts of the reckless, with by far the biggest and most reckless sterling debtor being Her Majesty's Government itself (with the Labour Party also having substancial debts). Which is what this really is about; transfering value from savers to the government, and from there on to Labour's payroll vote.