Intelligent Design....

...exposed for the sham that it is. Quite a long video but a good watch. I looked at it and thought oh I'll watch this later but ended up sitting through the whole thing.

Speechless

Money pissed up against a wall was that report. Fuck me, what a fucking joke! I am lost for words, why is the world so wrong! Lets make people feel British, lets give them a council tax or student fee rebate to people who volunteer to swear allegiance to queen and fucking country. Fuck britishness, fuck scottishness, fuck stupid petty nationalism. By all means celebrate cultrural heritage and shit, as well as be willing to scrutinise it and say haud on actually not everything to do with blighty or wherever you come from is all that great.

This to me is a great example of petty pointless change and it is the most hideously depressing example of the hole of a country we live in. It's a good thing I know fuck all about explosives or I'd be suicide bombing parliament. Actually I wish I could sustain this strength of feeling, not because I actually want to suicide bomb anything but it would be good to sustain the energy to channel it into something more positive.

Greedy arsehole(s)!

Despite the fact that this guy has been reported to the police and asked to pay back a whack of expenses he thinks now is a good time to suggest that sixty thousand a year for a back bench MP isn't enough and that something in the region of eighty to one hundred thousand would be more appropriate. The gall of the man is quite impressive, its like he is saying "yes I am a greedy bastard and proud of it, baaa tis what it means to be British," while thumping his chest at same time no doubt.

Clearly wasn't enough for him, though by god his sons must have been some really good researchers £11,773 a year for an 18 hour week seems decent enough, no need for student loans in this family but they were so good they earned four ten grand bonuses for their work. The constituents of Old Bexley and Sidcup must think themselves really lucky. Travelling back from studying at Newcastle University at weekends all the way to London, now there is a work ethic to be proud of. Perhaps the bonuses were for travel expenses?

He complained that he earned more as the Chief Executive of the Cats Protection League, if I was high up the CPL I'd be rechecking the accounts, well as a cat lover I'm pleased to hear they can pay that kind of wage I just hope whoever has the job now is earning their keep and cat welfare up and down the country should be fine. Thing is if all you are concerned about is money then in my opinion you are likely to be a twat of an MP. In my view MP's earnings should be linked to the wage and or living standards of the average citizen and while £60k a year might pale in comparison to the chief exec post of a charity run to protect the nations moggies I wouldn't think it wouldn't leave you short, indeed when you add in the fact you can hire the whole family to run your office I daresay household income is not likely to be a concern.

This clown however much of a crook or poor scapegoat whatever view you happen to take is clearly wired to the moon.

Religion!

When you read a story like the Gillian Gibbons one, you cannot help but think the world has gone mad. It's both hilariously funny and monumentally depressing at the same time. Such insanity and madness I can't think of a better example than perhaps when the people of Hartlepool hanged a monkey because they feared it was a french spy.

I don't know what is worse the sheer fundamentalist fervour of people in Sudan or the undercurrent of racism and cultural superiority found in many comments on this issue. The BBC website comments on it from all sides had me wanting a nuclear holocaust. That wasn't to say I didn't find some insightful and intelligent comments on it but they were far outnumbered by the hordes of madness, piousness, bigotry, and crass stupidity etc.

All religions are a fucking plague on this earth, I accept there are very many decent christians, muslims, hindus, sikhs, jews, and people of all religions really that are basically good people but the whole concept is a cancer of the mind and soul. It's about time people took a look around the world and treated fellow humans with just basic respect that we are all equal under any or no god and that we have the same right to life and right to hold different ideas. And if you want or can't help but believe in some deity fine but for fuck sake keep it to yourself and don't murder, maim or inprison anyone in the name of them please.

Lets face it we are destroying the world we life on and we'll tear each other apart whilst doing so as the planets resources diminish and when we join the dinosaur as an extinct species we'll have well earned it and good luck to any poor bastard of a specis that survives to inherit the earth. Maybe the next sentient species can do a better job.

This puzzles me somewhat

It seems to suggest that a lot of people are fed up with strike action in France. Fair enough there is a real cost and the inconvience probably gets right annoying and if the route of the problem is a group of people who have it better than you by being able to retire earlier than what you can I imagine that irks people and probably doesn't lend itself to sympathy.

It seems that yon Sarkozy fellow thinks the fact that the average French person works less is a bad thing, hurting their economy. I can't say I'm all that knowledgeable about the French or indeed world economic affairs but it sounds to me like lower average working hours and earlier retirement are good things and aspired to. Now far be it from me to say early retirement should be mandatory either if you enjoy your job and are good at it you should be entitled to work as logn as you like. I think that the base logic behind the increasing workings hours to equal increased economic vitality for the French is fundamentally flawed.

Well maybe not entirely but are there no unemployed people in France just now? It semes to me whether economies boom or bust there is always unemployment, homelessness and all myriad forms of social problems but surely essentially punishing the average working citizen by trying to increase how much they work is a dreadful idea. I can't say I have the solutions but the basic answer to increasing your economic output should surely rather than make people in work work more get more people into work?

I appreciate it probably gets more complex but how many people just now in Britain wouldn't kill to reduce their working hours to somethign like the French average?

Back from holiday again

Hence the complete lack of postings lately. Good time had, fortunate timing in that football wise I missed Motherwell getting beat and returned in time for Scotlands win over the Ukraine. Weather was about perfect hot but not unbearable during the day and warm/cool at night.

Didn't do a whole lot, chilled out at pool/beach and read some books. I'll maybe list the books later.

Was back in time for headlines about how the tories are now anything up to 9 points ahead in the opinion polls. Not that I care greatly I find both major parties little more than different puppets on the different hands of the same person. But the swing apparently from a couple of weeks earlier is well into double figures. I like to think I'm quite open minded, flexible to new ideas and so on but what sort of idiots are continually changing their minds about which party they'll apparently vote for with such ease given the recent swings to and fro.

I find it almost impossible to believe the tories have changed at all, compassionate conservatism my arse. If David Cameron whilst touting his green credentials had the remotest sincerity about them he wouldn't have been on a private jet or whatever to head north up to the artic or wherever he went for the photo op about to show concerned he was over global warming and he wouldn't have chosen to cycle to work whilst having his suitcase and papers and what not driven behind him in a big car.

And New Labour is hardly any better so sorry if Iwasn't on the edge of my seat over the will there won't there be an election, what difference will it make? Not a fucking lot would be the answer. It's the differnece between getting mugged and left shaken and getting mugged and the mugger being kind enough to at least hand back enough for bus fare home.

and as for the Lib Dems I did vote for them last election, and they've been sliding in the polls. Is it the fault of the now ex leader Menzies Campbell, well maybe but I can't say I've noticed a whole deal of difference between him and any of the previous two in that relatively speaking politically completely anonymous. As the third party with nil chance of power they only get headlines if they are infighting and/or the other two are having a relatively quiet time, or when one of them appears in public with a cheeky girl. But to be honest Charles Kennedy and Paddy Ashdown may well give a better account of themselves in parliament, not that many people watch that but well you really only heard about them for respective drink problems and extra marital affairs, unless the name Paddy pants down came about for some other reason. It seems so far back in mists of time now that I'm assuming that's how that nickname came about.

How bad do you have to be...

...for George W to consider sanctions?

On a less flippant note this story is both uplifting and depressing at the same time. I'm no respector of religious belief and the fact that it's monks demonstrating doesn't add an extra poigancy for me beyond the fact I assume they are quite pointedly non violent. How can people live with themselves working for security forces crack down on a non violent protest?

Do the people in these forces believe they are protecting a decent state from internal dissidents? Surely to fuck not. I don't know these peoples lives in any detail but I can barely comphrehend how people can join any military.

I've read many times about things like he following,

• The use of child soldiers and forced labour.
• Laws that criminalize peaceful expression of political dissent. At the end of 2006 most senior opposition figures were imprisoned or administratively detained, among more than 1,160 political prisoners held in deteriorating prison conditions.
• People are frequently arrested without warrant and held incommunicado.
• Torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment are common, especially during interrogation and pre-trial detention.
• Judicial proceedings against political detainees have failed to meet international standards of fairness.
• Defendants are often denied the right to legal counsel and prosecutors have relied on confessions extracted through torture.

That was lifted of Amnesty website and thats just scratching the surface. There is a section in John Pilgers book Hidden Agendas delaing with his experience in Burma which is worth reading.

It's no wonder people filter out this kind of unsavoury news, it's very easy to stick our heads in the sand.

Quote that wot I liked.

I read as much as I can, and quite often I'll be reading something of a philosophical/political persuasion and think ooh I like the sound of that. It sums up something you've been grasping to understand in a few sentances or even better says something profound that hitherto wasn't even on your radar. At this point I often think I need to note this down and share it with other people. Usually however I forget which page it was on and as i'm in the middle of reading I don't stop there and don't exactly forget about it but don't have the patience to go looking for it. Today however I was fortunate enough to be finishing more or less at the page where i saw latest thing that grabbed me.

It's from Power by Bertrand Russell and is as follows....

...,"Men who allow their love of power to give them a distorted view of the world are to be found in every asylum: one man will think he is the King, and yet another will think he is God. Highly similar delusions, if expressed by educated men in obscure language, lead to professorships of philosophy; and if expressed by emotional men in eloquent language, lead to dictatorships. Certified lunatics are shut up because of their proneness to violence when their pretensions are questioned; the uncertified variety are given the control of powerful armies, and can inflict death and disaster on all sane men within their reach. The success of insanity, in literature, in philosophy, and in politics, is one of the pecularities of our age, and the successful form of insanity proceeds almost entirely from impulses towards power."

Should the Olympics be held in China?

Now to balance what might be seen as an implied cultural bias I would add that I would ban Great Britain and the United States from hosting the Olympics on political grounds. Not that the ideals of the Olympics mean very much in this day and age, but as well as the human rights issues it's barely safe for the athletes to compete apparantly?

The following seems to form the core of the base for the defence.

"If anything, the Games can only be a catalyst for constructive dialogue in a complex and sensitive transformation that is taking place in compressed time," he said.

"We believe that in the past six years the Olympic Games have had a positive impact in a number of areas such as education, media regulations and on environmental standards."

Amnesty International seem more sceptical.

Just got a postcard from Robert Fisk...

...which was a slightly surreal start to the day. Now before anyone thinks it's completely random it was in a response to a letter I'd sent him earlier in the year. The letter was sent in early april so I'd all but forgotten about it. He doesn't take email correspondance and letters are sent care of the Independent offices as he lives and works out in the middle east for the most part. I really wasn't expecting a reply but I got one and as it was he took the time to reply to my letter from his holiday in Ireland. Almost feel guilty about sending it now, I have a mental image of him sitting with a towering pile of letters to reply to while he's meant to be relaxing on holiday.

I'd asked him about Irans president and how he was labeled, by himself included, a holocaust denier. I'd been familiar with a bit of a furore about comments the guy had made re the Holocaust and they were certainly ambiguous but in a general climate of Iran bashing I wasn't sure what he'd said, at least as far as the direct quotes I'd seen in print could be taken that way unless you had an agenda to be outraged and/or make the guy look like a dangerous lunatic. Which of course he quite possibly is.

So I'd basically decided to write to Robert Fisk as he's one journalist I consider to be knowledgeable and have integrity. Now obviously given the answer is on the back of a postcard it's not exactly detailed but he basicaly said why he could be labelled a Holocaust denier. If not so much the words Irans president said but the people he invited over, prominent Holocaust deniers and the head of the Klu Klux Klan. Now whatever he did say publicaly or thinks privately one is almost certainly judged by the company one keeps.

What a farce...

...around 100,000 people couldn't fill in a ballot correctly! Yes I'm sure theres a figure in the thousands of people deliberately spoiling ballot papers in a form of protest, can't say I've never been tempted just to write some rant or single word piece of abuse on a ballot paper. Probably only thing that stopped me is that only bugger to read it would be some balllot counter in Wishaw Sports Centre and they aren't who I'd really be aiming it at.

I can't believe how stupid some people are. It was all very clearly explained, on polling card, at the polling station. If you were in doubt you could find it explained in the media in several places. But given the circumstances of the sudden increase in spoiled votes it's hard not to conclude that we have thousands of complete idiots trying to vote. We either should have some basic intelligence test or just not worry about it as lets face it if someone is so thick that they can't complete a simple ballot paper correctly then you do not want them voting in the first place.

As for the result itself, I was quite pleased. Disappointed the Labour share of the vote didn't really go down much. The blood on the hands and rolling back of civil liberties of this party albeit at a national level is so much I find it hard to comprehend how anyone with the ability to reason would vote for them. Even if I was a hardened unionist I'd have voted SNP at the election as any possibility of Independence could only happen after a referendum and irrespective of my own thoughts on that unlikely as it is I feel whatever position you take a referendum isn't a bad thing. Obviously the SNP has garnered more support that at any time before and it does raise the question of independance but I think you'll find many people voted for SNP for reasons other than their Independence referendum pledge and stated long term aim.

So far it is looking like no coalition is likely to develop, there is still time but the only real coalition option for the SNP the Lib Dems doesn't appear to be happening. How well the SNP will fare trying to govern as a minority party is if not certain likely to be problematic. My worst fear is that they flounder due to lack petty politics or we go back to the polls and the safe option of Labour comes back to comfort the new found SNP converts who possibly don't have a whole heap of faith in them.

Irrespective of independence New Labour needs and deserves a damn good kicking in Scotland, and getting narrowly beaten in terms of seats and popular vote for me isn't enough.

Forthcoming election

I have to admit I have not really used my democratic right to vote over the now 10 years I've been entitled to use it. Indeed I have only used it once, and it wasn't back in 97 at the general election that year. that might come as something of a surprise, youthful enthusiasm and all that not to mention eighteen years or so of Conservative rule you would think I would have been gagging to vote. Certainly I wouldn't have imagined just how much of a disappointment New Labour would be. I consider Blair a war criminal for fuck sake, with blood of thousands on his hands.

No at the end of the day I was living in a safe Labour seat and well I always have done, it really is true you could have a monkey with a red rosette on and it would get in, in fact I think in Frank Roy they have. That has certainly always been a demotivating factor whatever I've felt about issues of the day at any given time.

However I have just become so disgusted by current government that whether or not my vote is of no consequence it is immoral not to vote against them. I would not like to see the Conservatives back in power at the next general election, but New Labour is no decent alternative. So at the last one I voted for the Lib Dems and low and behold despite finishing 3rd in my constituency you could still add up all the votes of every other party and it still wouldn't have been enough to equal what the Labou monkey got.

Scottish parliament however we do have list MP's and the like and the SNP are more in the mix so I think it's definatley worth voting in. I have never been a hardened nationalist and whilst I am planning on voting for the SNP it isn't because I feel won over by their argument I just have a deep deep desire for change. It has always rankled that during the 80's and first half ofthe 90's we were stuck with a Tory government when people of Scotland had voted consistantly Labour. If Scotland were to leave the Union it would surely be a huge blow to Lavour party down south, lets face it thats a good few guaranteed seats right out the window.

But how would it change our political landscape? Well it's hard to say but I would like to think that given majority of Scotland agrees on one thing we'd rather not have the Tories it might just free us from the sheep like mentality of voting Labour. A Labour party that went back to something like its roots might be worth voting for but ideally it would have to earn our votes rather than get them by default, there are a lot of ifs and buts and anyone who says that this and that would happen with any certainty is either a liar of deluded.

I don't go for the scare stories of how bad things would be if Scotland were independant, sure the 70's might have been a better era at the start of oil wealth but you look at Sweden and they seem to have a decent standard of living. Independance could potentialy be a great thing, get rid of the chip on the shoulder and inferiority complex that seems to haunt the Scottish psyche and take control of our own destiny. Don't get me wrong I don't think we're any better or worse than English or Welsh or whoever and despite having a lot in common I think we've got a distinct enough cultural identity that we should be governing our own affairs.

So come this next election I would encourage anyone to vote against Labour and for our own Independance, parliaments already built might as well use it properly rather than the nonsense we have now.

political compass

I'm sure you've seen the political compass website before, I think i've taken the questionnaire at least 3 or 4 times now. I've always been economicaly left and socially libertarian, but I wonder how much I change, I found my latest position on graph suggests not a lot.

If anything I've probably moved further left and more libertarian. I made a note of my answers this time, as there are always a few where I'm not that sure and an agree could easily have turned to a disagree, or strongly agree reduced to an agree. I wonder how much further right if it would place me if I merely agreed rather than strongly agreed on a lot of questions. I take the whole thing with a pinch of salt. I do like the fact that it's the Dai Lai Lama and Nelson Mandela in my little quadrant rather than the Mugabes, Bushes and Blairs in the authoritarian top half. There seems to be a distinct lack of examples in the libertarian economic right, I'm sure there must be some, surely not all right wing types have a penchant for jackboots?

If anyone cares to discuss answers to any particular question in the questionnaire, feel free to ask.