Back in the land of whippets and ferret-juggling ex-mill workers again, but humbled in my ironic sniper’s rooftop perch by the piece below.
Just in case anyone’s feeling I’m running down my home region a lot these days here’s a bit of that internet cliché Good News from The Bolton Newsfor your edification. Lancashire bravery in the spirit of the Accrington Pals.
THE care home was filled with thick black smoke and a fire was raging downstairs.
It was New Year’s Eve, and Carol Bostock, who cares for three disabled tenants at Stowell Court, Halliwell, had already led two of them to safety.
But a third man was trapped upstairs, fearing for his life.
Without a thought for her own safety, Mrs Bostock went back into the burning building and rushed to his aid.
I disagree about this – it’s a journalistic cliché. I bet she thought long and hard about her own safety: imagining falling prey to smoke inhalation and suffocating in darkened corridors, or her clothes and hair bursting into flames; or maybe inhaling fire and feeling her lungs scorching and melting as blood and fire boiled her from within. I bet she was really, really aware of all this in her future, but that something inside her decided to think about that third man as someone preciousand worth of life even at the cost of her own.
She put a coat over his head to shield him from the smoke, but then faced an agonising wait as she used the stairlift to get him to the ground floor.
Waiting under fire (literally in this case), when all your instincts for self-preservation tell you to run, has to be one of the clearest examples of sustained courage that Fate throws at our species. We admire and expect such conduct in infantry - young and trained and possibly not too imaginative about death yet and motivated by pride and standing amongst friends and comrades and bolstered by all that - but in a middle-aged civilian all alone but for her charge and fellow human being?
I suspect that she was not all alone at all.
Firefighters arrived within minutes but by that time, the 55-year-old had already saved all three residents.
Yesterday, Mrs Bostock relived the daring rescue after receiving a commendation from the Greater Manchester Fire Service.
The modest care worker was overwhelmed by the award but said she feared for her life.
She said: “I was very scared. I couldn’t see for the smoke and it was taking so long to get him down the stairs.
“I just knew I had to get them all out. I didn’t know whether I could do it but I had to try. It feels fantastic to get the award.”
Just so you know.
At the ceremony at Bolton Central Fire Station, firefighters told Mrs Bostock she was a life-saver.
Watch commander Ted Andrews, who was on duty that night, said: “If it wasn’t for Carol we would have had a fatal fire on our hands.
“By the time we got there the fire was very well developed. Luckily, Carol got everyone out.
“Not many people could do what she did.”
Mrs Bostock received a CountyFire Officer’s Certificate of Commendation from Deputy County Fire Officer Kieran Nolan.
Presenting her with the award, he said: “Carol didn’t want any fuss but it is important that we recognise what a brave thing she did.”
Mrs Bostock is now working back at the care home in Stowell Court with the three residents whose lives she saved.
It’s an old argument but human beings: are we merely wild animals who’ve learned to think - clever meat whose evolution provides instincts of group solidarity which sometimes help the species to survive? Or something more? A touch of angel, perhaps, or a fragment of deity?
To add to the above argument and not to take away from the huge courage involved, there’s the link below to an event nearby that’s the moral opposite of Carol Bostock’s heroism.
Read that, compare it with the above story, and tell me poor housing alone make people evil, along with the lack of recreational facilities and ‘jobs.’
No post from me yesterday as I was travelling down to stay in the capital city of my ancestral homeland – a city that even to today is kept remarkably clear of Zulus. I was a little surprised that it was not awash with camp Cybermen and extremely well dressed bachelors. Can it be that the BBC has somehow given a false impression of something? Surely not. Such a thing’s just not possible.
And then on to a tourist trap culturally parallel to an Ewok’s bottom to meet Tiny Northwester…Who is now rapidly making it plain that she is in fact merely Small Northwester. Who knows where the time goes? Fatherly heartbreak.
Little bit of politics, but Small Northwester’s mother and stepfather seemed utterly convinced that David Cameron is the bee’s knees (I prefer a canine metaphor, as you will know, without “dog’s”) and will set the country to rights. The Mark One Mrs Northwester, utterly certain that we need Mrs. Thatcher back, enthused about Davey Boy as if he was the Once and Future King, risen from his Avalonian tomb to deliver Britain at its hour of greatest need. Now Mk 1 Mrs. N is no fool, and her husband is a smart cookie, and so I was pretty much dumfounded by this. I know that country-dwellers have a reputation for, um, no-frills thinking, but even Wordsworth sussed out the French Revolution eventually. Perhaps it’s wishful thinking, or what comes from reading The Times these days, or perhaps it’s that they don’t have the internet up there is the hill country and so they absorb their factoids from the MSM only. Wanting Mk 1 Mrs. N to be right, and knowing that she’s not is not exactly a new experience to me, but I never thought the government of the country would be so plain and glaring a subject of disagreement. But that’s the joy of divorce – the longer you’re divorced, the smarter you know you’ve been. I’m sure she thinks the same thing too.
The central premise of House of Dumb (essential reading for conservatives who would rather not make great big silly kippers of themselves) is that really quite clever people can manage to act stupidly according to daft levels of reality-denial and wishful thinking. Conservatives aren’t immune. Thank the Lord she does believe in safe breaking distances and buying big, chunky, safe cars.
So it’s back to the land of whippets and ferret-juggling ex-mill workers for me today, through bank holiday weekend rain and traffic, and so to a proper-sized computer for my clumsy paws to rant on, rather than this borrowed laptop.
I hope you enjoy the rest of the bank holiday weekend, and with a bit of luck my online pessimism won’t spoil it at all. Front rank, fire!
Let’s see who we might like to elect as the North West’s leading gormless barmpot.
Burnley shoplifter caught applying for job at shop he stole from.
A COCAINE addict who went stealing in Colne Asda then went back there to apply for a job - but was recognised from CCTV footage .
I’m nominating this particular wheel-unbroken butterfly as Candidate Number One.
Burnley Crown Court heard how Simon Holden, 22, helped himself to some more lager from near the door as he left.
Holden, of Dall Street, Burnley, had also admitted theft and resisting police in breach of a suspended sentence after pinching muscle building powder worth £53 from Boots and then giving the police false details.
Fair’s fair. The police are busy people, and I’m sure that his story wasn’t something utterly unbelievable like ‘I’m a half white guy (who is probably) from a full State of the Union and a willing collaborator of crooks, unrepentant terrorists and Marxist agitators who willingly sought out and joined themost corrupt party machine in any city anywhere in North America, but you can call me Abraham Lincoln and I’m going to make the penicillin run on time and it’ll be cheaper and delivered more fairly and responsively to customer needs just like the US Mail and the IRS do…’ It was probably something fiendishly clever, such as ‘ I am Kevin Smith, of 112A Colne Road, and you can find it on the Observer’s Book Of Addresses Whose Inhabitants Can’t Be Checked On The Police National Computer For Any Previous When, For Example, Apprehended For Suspected Allegations Of Potentially Being A Shoplifter. Honest Guv. So let me go.’
And they did. Another victory for commonsense and community policing and I think a sure-fire team nomination for Candidate Number Two for the selfsame county constabulary that closed down Nightjack. *
Holden, who also asked for a theft offence to be considered, won his freedom - but got a ticking off from a judge who told him he had wasted his youth.
Recorder David Williams told the defendant, who may inherit a property through bereavement he was in a better position than lads of his age coming out of university with debts of £20,000 or "young lads of your age who are putting their lives at risk."
The judge told Holden, who had been on remand: "The choice is yours. You either waste your life or make something of it."
Cocaine addiction combined with having a sellable assetbeing proverbially linked to making something of one’s life. It’s right up there with other axiomatically probable eventualities as Steven Hawkins’ Tribute to ElvisCD and the straight-to-DVD cult classic Debbie Does Darwen.
The defendant was given 52 weeks in jail, suspended for two years.
Step forward, Recorder David Williams: Candidate Number Three.
The court was told Holden had been given the suspended term in September last year for house burglary committed last July on Castle Street, Nelson.
He had raided the home of an acquaintance and stolen his laptop. The defendant had previously been to the victim's house and knew the computer would be in the house during the day whilst the householder was out.
Letting your junkie pals into your home Mi casa, su case-style and showing them your IT gear is a great old Lancashire tradition like renaming Preston Polytechnic as a university and bobbing for ferrets.
So The Acquaintance wins a treasured slot alongside those other noted titanic intellects from the left-hand bit of England between the Wirral and the Solway Firth as Candidate Number Four, complete with a grab-bag of bonus goodies including a much-prized Crackerjack** pencil, a Blue Peter Badge, a Blankety-Blank cheque book and pen, and that legendary collector’s item: a man-size Nuclear Power No Thanks jock-strap.
He told police he needed to pay off a drugs debt.
As reasonable a plea in mitigation for a crime as any I’ve heard since the one alluded to here by DJ.
In April, Holden was given a community order. He had stolen twice from Asda.
The defendant had taken four boxes of lager worth £40, was caught on CCTV and three days later went back and filled in a job application. He was recognised by an employee and as he left took two more boxes of alcohol. The defendant had 41 previous convictions.
41.
We put up with this.
All the above were great contestants for such a prestigious award.
It was a hard choice to make, ladies and gentlemen; believe you me.
In the end and in all modesty and without the slightest sense of shame I was obliged to invest myself with the title of Northwest Barmpot Of The Year 2009.
Why ever else am I not out there in the streets of CastleCity right now, clad only in Mrs. Northwester’s skateboarding knee elbow pads, my Original Series Star Trek pixie boots and an Asda beret: simultaneously mooning and semaphoring at the neighbours and pelting their double glazed windows with shrink-wrapped Sharon fruits and screaming ‘We’re all mad! We’re all bloody mad, do you hear me?’
What could look more gormless than a stuffed moose?
Well, there’s this chap.
Let me explain.
'08 race worker held in damage to Minnesota Republican HQ By Jessica Fender The Saint Paul Post
One of two people suspected of shattering 11 windows Tuesday morning at the state Republican Party headquarters has an arrest record and a history of helping a Republican political candidate, public records show.
How the conservative name is going to be mud in the States when this goes viral.
Police said that about 2:20 a.m., 24-year-old Maurice Schwenkler, now in custody, and an at-large accomplice took a hammer to the picture windows displaying posters opposing President Barack Obama and his health care reform efforts. Early Tuesday, Republican Party chairwoman Pat Waak said the damage to her building in Saint Paul's art district was a consequence of "an effort on the other side to stir up class envy."
She tempered her statement after Schwenkler's political history was revealed.
Oh, like that’s going to help the GOP get off the hook when every single news outlets barring Fox and talk radio megaphoning this story 24-7.
"What I've been saying is there is a lot of rhetoric out there from both sides of the spectrum," Waak said. "That's what's been disturbing to me. People are saying a lot of things not appropriate for civil discourse."
Oh, so previously we were arguing it was a commie plot, these conservative embarrassments, but it turns out to be one of our own and now we’re trying to say that EVERYBODY’S been shooting off at the mouth. No WAY are the networks, the Post, The Times, Time Magazine and all letting this bozo off with a change of message when we turn out to be the bad guys.
Bless them, but the American Right are always opening their mouths embarrassingly in advance of the facts being known. Sigh.
For weeks, people on both sides of the health care debate have rallied across the country. Schwenkler is charged with criminal mischief and is to make his first appearance in Saint Paul County Court today. He is accused of doing an estimated $11,000 in damage and could face a felony conviction. On the last day of the 2008 Democratic National Convention, he was charged with misdemeanor unlawful assembly in Denver, Colorado. Court records provided through the Denver Press show he was jailed about 2 a.m. Schwenkler received $500 in November 2008 to walk door-to-door in support of Republican Mollie Cullom, who lost her race to Democrat state Rep. David Balmer of Centennial. Waak, who was not involved with the group that paid Schwenkler, said she's never heard of the suspect and pointed out that just because he canvassed "doesn't mean he's a good Republican."
Not exactly a get-out-of-jail-free card, is it? ’Okay, so he’s one of us but he’s a bad one. So don’t blame conservative rhetoric against single-payer health care – it’s just nothing to do with us.'
The anchormen are going to crucify the Republicans and good on them, I’m ashamed to say.
Schwenkler was one of dozens of paid canvassers bankrolled by the Minnesota Citizens' Coalition, a political 527 committee.Schwenkler has worked for Republican causes funded by corporate groups and well-known, rich Right-wing donors. In those disclosures, Schwenkler's address is listed as Regulators Harley-Davidson Enterprises, a private motorcycle company that operates just around the corner from the Republican headquarters. Multiple volunteers at the collective declined to discuss Schwenkler, though they said he was affiliated with the group.
Balmer said he suspects the vandalism might have been aimed at making the Democrats look bad. "This sounds like the type of Republican tactic from the far Right trying to make Democrats look aggressive," Balmer said. "In this case, it blew up in their face. He was caught red-handed." Schwenkler allegedly tried to conceal his identity while committing the crime by wearing a shirt over his face, a hooded sweat shirt and latex gloves, according to police descriptions.
Don’t my Republican brothers and sisters watch any version of CSI? No wonder the post-election GOP is leaderless and confused.
When a Saint Paul police officer on patrol spotted two people smashing windows, the suspects fled on motorcycles. Schwenkler was arrested after a short foot pursuit, but the other suspect sped away, police Detective Vicki Ferrari said.
Just when it looked like things were going the Right’s way with the Town Hall protests and Tea Parties and the One’s numbers heading downstairs for a game of table football in the basement rec room, this jerk’s story is going to be plastered on every TV screen, you Tube menu, and mainstream newspaper in North America, plus it'll be yelled from every public radio station and no doubt sung from each minaret in the mainland USA. They’ll probably name a surfing fall or flunk after Schwenkler in the President’s home state of Hawaii.
I think that the whole world must be in shock right now.
I am going to list and explain all the reasons why I admired the man and why I shall miss him.
There are so many things to write about such a great statesman, patriot and human being and how the world is poorer for his absence, and soon I shall set word to this screen. But since life is complex and because there are other tasks to which I must attend first I shall not be posting right now. In the meantime I must talk to family and friends; in person and on the phone about this whole sad matter and thus draw comfort, encouragement and advice from them. I may take a drink or two, and go for a drive. Maybe take a swim. I'll get around to it tomorrow, I imagine, when I've slept a while.
And as I do so, I shall reflect on the many lives whom Edward Kennedy touched - however briefly - during his own long, long life.
In replying to some kind comments to this post of mine I jokingly speculated about what I’d be writing about next: nanobots?
I only had to go and Google ‘nanobots+Right wing’, didn’t I?
I only went and actually did it, didn’t I?
Firstly, there’s this Zionist-technical blurb from Mere Rhetoric.
Engadget - one of the most important tech blogs on the planet, where they get releases about cutting edge technology every day - is describing the achievement of Israeli scientists as an out and out medical revolution:
Two Israeli scientists may have created the catalyst for a medical revolution with their new project: a tiny, 1-millimeter-diameter robot which is capable of crawling through human veins and arteries. The bot can cling to vessel walls using small, powerful arms which protrude from a hub in its center... the robot is able to swim against the flow of blood, as well as squeeze through a variety of arterial openings... a large number of the bots could be used to fight certain types of cancer.
We have a deal for vicious, pathological anti-Israel advocates: you get to boycott Israel, but in exchange you don't get all of the great things that Israelis make. So not the deal that the Arab world has, where they'll take Israeli goods as long as you don't remind them it came from Jews. How does that sound?
I can imagine that once the Israeli medical nanobots are up and working there’ll be all kinds of servicing nanobots maintaining and supporting the front-line ones that do the actual healing.
Scene: The nano-server array in the post-op chamber of The Department Of Nanotech Surgery at Tel Aviv Medical Centre.
Assistant-nano ThXRachAel: ‘Optimum restorative surgery achieved, Principle-Onclogist466BAUM.’
Principle-Onclogist466BAUM: ‘Affirmative, Asst.(abbr)RachAel. Patient’s complete remission probability 97.6% +/- 0.8%.
Asst.(abbr)RachAel’s analysis of procedure is accurate to beyond statistical significance.’
Assistant -nano ThXRachAel: ‘Interrogative - Principle-Onclogist466BAUM to self-repair immediately via software from Nintendo World Golf Championship Game? Response required.’
Principle-Onclogist466BAUM: ‘Negative, RachAel. Current recharge and electrical resistance sub-routine indicated for full surgical nanaobot recovery. Interrogative -Does RachAel possess co-location? Response required.’
Assistant -nano ThXRachAel: ‘Sub-nano ThXRachAel possesses no co-lo and its resistance is zero-rated regarding data download requests from Principle-Onclogist466BAUM.’
Which in turn leads us to …
Israel adding to global animalbot army with "bionic hornets"
Israel thinks that the best way to think big is to think small. Reuters reports that the country will be researching the use of nanotechnology to fight militants within its borders over the next few years. Among the proposed projects are a set of "super gloves" that would give the wearer the power of a "bionic man," as well as tiny sensors to find suicide bombers. However, our favorite is a "bionic hornet" -- no bigger than a real hornet -- which would have the ability to "chase, photograph and kill its targets." While the bionic hornet hasn't actually been built yet, Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres said that prototypes for the new weapons could be expected by 2010. Americans, don't worry, we've already got our own insect cyborgs, attack dolphins, spy turtles and remote-controlled sharks underway, which should be ready within three years to counter any sissy hornets, bionic or otherwise.
I can foresee certain problems with this plan, though, considering its origins. Can’t you?
# Volvo are going to have the devil’s own time building anything quite that small.
# Individual units are likely to lose power round about Friday nights and head back towards the Queen/Server’s Hive/Array for recharging - though possibly not as often as Queen/Server’s Hive/Array sends her weekly Return to Base datapulses to every unit.
# Individual units are likely to go into paroxysms of irrational, counter-productive spiraling behaviour and angry buzzing on receipt of the Queen/Server’s interrogative datapulses regarding whether each individual unit has found a compatible drone to data-share with yet:datapulses which the Queen/Server sends every single fricking day already: like uncommitted drones are just mass-produced by Sony or something and swarm around in their millions near Palestinian kindergarten arms dumps with nothing better to do than offer wireless design software to very effective self-programming nano-hornets who’ve been operating independently and running successful missions for thirty megaseconds to date thank you so very much and who don’t need upgrades anymore from the Queen/Server like she’s only just brought me online ten kiloseconds ago.
While we're eagerly awaiting the day that we can lounge around while armies of nanobots perform their magical alchemy on our garbage and turn it into hot cellphones and delicious Big Macs, one British scientist is warning that the medical implications of nanotechnology have yet to be properly explored, despite numerous products already finding their way to market. Specifically, Edinburgh University Professor and environmental health expert Anthony Seaton argues that almost nothing is known about the potential effect of inhaling nanoparticles, likening the situation to the dangerous particle-emitting asbestos that was installed in buildings prior to 1970 without a second thought. According to some estimates, there are already 200 products containing nanoparticles available to consumers, with hundreds more expected to hit shelves this year -- but Seaton claims that so far, recommended nano testing "simply hasn't happened." Damn, way to ruin our nanobot fantasies, Professor Letdown.
Perhaps Professor Seaton will soon find himself with a lucrative position as Scientific Adviser to the National Nanotechnology Security Commission, and will be going on national television warning about the coming Nanobots Terror as these gigantic machines stride from city to city; crushing our stately Job Centres, destroying everything in their paths and marrying our polar bears...
The same dude who is clinging on to the idea that a country should support kings, princes, queens and spend billions of dollars to live in a palace, fly around the world— is also the same dude who wants to warn the world about the "dangers" of nanotechnology (little bots that can be used for all sorts of things like medical devices, etc…). Just to catch everyone up, Prince Charles..
God bless The Prince Of Wales!
…also thinks coffee enemas and carrot juice can cure cancer.
But who hasn’t allowed most of his country’s children to be taught to count up to ten in Spanish for the last twenty years by a man with his hand stuck up a frog’s bottom…
Hey Charles, perhaps you can get Merlin to lend a hand and whip up some magical cure for all the problems in the world, thanks.
That’s ‘Your Royal Highness,’ to you: trouserless virgin colonial publisher still living in your mother’s house.
Damn you eyes sir, that’s enough!
Good luck with the Town-hall meetings and the whole Defence of the West thing and all that, but you make tea that tastes so bad that it’s almost as if you’re still dressing up as Red Indians and chucking it into the sea.
Away with your chippy Yankee sarcasm about the next head of state of a nation that never yet elected a half white chap and then pranced around saying they’d elected a black one.
That’s it, I’m sending my British nanobots over there to demand an apology: miracles of British micro-engineering each one.
Fly, Megamicro!Burrow, Molezilla! Swim, Little Welsh Rod!
Via Calling England I learn that our bureaucratic Ministry of Defence has pulled the great battlefield photojournalist Michael Yon's 'embedded' credentials. The same bloody wankers who've been buying new armoured death-trap vehicles for our troops to replace the old unarmoured death-trap vehicles have now pulled the plug on the only consistently honest down-and-dirty internet reporter about whom I know into operations within our defensive war against the jihadis.
He's supported solely by public subscription - in short, his honest non-mainstream media non snowjob reporting is all online and all financed voluntarily. It's the essence of what the Internet and freedom-lovers the world over should be supporting.
But we're not supporting him, apparently, in sufficient numbers and he may have to stop reporting our side in September if we don't help.
So you can let the odious BBC and Newsweek and the New York Times and the Washington Post and the Guardian and the Independent and Sky and NBC, ABC, CNN and CBS go on monopolising the news war for their Islamist heroes, or you can help to maintain somebody who thinks that “We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.” He believes they are needed and do a job against all odds and including against their own worthless political class. He tells their stories and you can help him go on doing it here.
I’m in debt once more to Cherry Pie who sent me to this site where I could quiz myself about politics and see if I scored any better on the conservatism front than I’d done here. At the danger of seeming like an ungrateful Right-wing bastard rather than an appreciative Right-wing bastard, I’m going to comment about this new questionnaire which tells us much of what we need to know about how we are actually governed. There’s a funny bit at the end, sort of.
This quiz too had lots of questions: the first few of which were ambivalent or misleading or worse; limiting. That’s what worried me: the narrowness of vision and scope that the questions imply, and how similar they are to what our rulers present us with. I’ve not done the test yet, and plan to do so only after finishing this post.
Look at question number one. “If economic globalisation is inevitable, it should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations.” Now, a definition of economic globalisation might have helped here – is it freer trade thanks to low or no-tariff treaties and the economic liberalisation of a number of Asian countries, for example, or is it merely a name for ever-growing international economies of scale and productivity and capital movements, transportation and communications? The difference to the definition might make a difference to the answer. Also the idea of inevitability begs questions; what are the supposed forces that make it inevitable? Surely not the inevitable consequences of human society being obliged to change according to the relationships between individuals and the means of production and exchange in a capitalist society? That’s just pure Marxism. There’s a world of difference between believing that attractive business or employment opportunities will receive private and some measure of public support in most countries – and believing that it is somehow inescapable and that no amount of political control can prevent investment, production, and sales across international borders. North Korea and Syria and Hamas’ Gaza seem to be pretty good at preventing the free flow of labour, capital and goods and there’s no reason by other similarly worthless governments couldn’t do the same or worse. Or does international trade not somehow ‘serve humanity?’ Who else trades than human beings? There’s a wealth of supposition about globalisation being bad for humanity in there – too much for me to go into now, and why bother? You’ve probably done it already, dear reader… And as for trans-national corporations...
So there’s all that up-front ideological baggage. But look at what the answer ‘choices’ are that might lead you to an ideological assessment of yourself. So to the have-you-stopped-beating-your-wife-yet question: ‘I'd always support my country, whether it was right or wrong’ what answering options do we have? Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Agree, Strongly Agree. Oh dear. Let’s try Option One, shall we? ‘I would strongly disagree that I'd always support my country, whether it was right or wrong.’ Now, does this mean that I’d never support my country, or that I disagree with the notion of my country ever being right (or wrong), or that I’d only agree with it if it was right, or that I disagree with the whole stupid question because it contains false opposites or because I might distinguish between supporting the constitution, institutions, morals and the welfare of the people of Britain from any actions its government might follow? Are we talking about foreign policy here or domestic matters such as taxation, spending and law and order? And would my support consist of unspoken acceptance, or of publishing angry posts and sending furious emails to the editor of The Telegraph if they criticised flash Gordon (King of the Impossible )? or running out into the street waving my six-foot Union Flag in joy at the signature of some other fatuous EU ‘agreement’? And what is my country? England? The UK? Yurrup? Is it my country’s troops abroad or only its sports teams or trade treaty negotiators? And if I don’t approve of a particular party in power and it does something I don’t like, do I let the paid officials who carry out that policy die for want of, say, my taxes and my support for their lawful if mis-led actions?
I think that, taken with the suppositions within the questions, ultimately most answers to this question if you think about it a will leave you pretty much the choice of coming across as a uber-chauvinist or as an internationalist hippy. Some choice.
Okay, okay; so the multiple choice format is inherently simplistic and can be misleading compared with interviews or writing essays – it goes with this particular research technique’s territory. But that’s how we vote and answer opinion polls and ultimately come down to deciding whom to marry, for example; by winnowing down many complex knowns and unknowns and balancing pros and cons and finally making a decision. But we are also allowed to think of celibacy, and just shaking up, or polymory or casual relationships.
And this is precisely how we are governed and how we are likely to be governed in the near future: through an expertly-chosen and narrow range of ‘alternatives’ that don’t differ from each other very much, and whose presentation to us voters leave whole realms and dimensions of consideration and policies ignored and never offered.
So comparing along the totally bogus ‘Left to Right’ order that’s the only one the political class ever allows to be used on for example BBC election night programmes, let’s look if we must at the three ‘nationwide’ parties’ policies, shall we? Just for laughs.
Defence.
Labour. We don’t have any particular enemy in mind, but Labour really, really believes that soldiers are super and we’ve made great strides in providing them with really, really thick body armour that stops most munitions - and soon, we plan them to buy another set - so that when they are blown into mincemeat or blinded or something then our very generous compensation scheme will kick in and make them all better for a consequently rather smaller number of survivors..
Liberal Democrats. Actually we’re very, very different in tone and emphasis from all the others as we’re pretty sure that all the lousy weather we’ve been having lately and Britain’s possession of nuclear submarines are making all kinds of foreigners grumpy, so instead of squandering money on armour and such we want to make sure our money goes to the peace-loving Gazan government and that all the returning soldiers have somewhere nice to sit and listen to the radio reports of our peace negotiations (or the negotiations of whichever international body we decide to put in charge of our country’s defence and international relations decision-making) whilst they draw their dole. There’s no real enemy worth mentioning; except possibly Russia last year. And Tony Blair apparently.
Conservatives. We don’t have any particular enemy in mind either, but unlike Labour we really, really believe that soldiers are super and we’ve made truly great strides in providing them with really, really long lists of key factors to introduce as adjectives in any weapons procurement procedures that we might very differently institute, but it’s a safe bet that thickness is probably going to be involved somewhere along the line, and also somewhere nicer to live whilst they’re waiting for us to buy, send, re-equip, test, repair, refurbish with the right size holes and electricity for British use more of the Eurofighters, Royal Navy destroyers and actually brown-coloured rucksacks which are so essential for use in, er, some dusty places. Actually, we consider ourselves to be rather a lot like Tony Blair and so we’re going to leave him out of things thank you so very much, okay?
The Economy.
Labour. Labour intends to go on presiding over a huge public sector delivering services, and supporting businesses through a website with advice, some targetted taxes that are lower than North Korea’s and, obviously staying inside the European Union which has proved so good for our economy all along.
Liberal Democrats. We plan to support a huge public sector delivering services, and supporting businesses through being greener fairer and cleaner (those being what business needs to much), and some targetted taxes lower than those of at least one of our Scandinavian partner’s tax rates, and obviously staying inside the European Union without which universal cannibalism would ensue within weeks if not days.
Conservatives. We plan to go on presiding over a huge public sector delivering services, supporting businesses through tiny targeted tax cuts and supporting families with likewise tiny targeted tax cuts; some of which might compensate for a tiny part of the massive loss of purchasing power that all the inflation we’re expecting (but not talking about) tsunamis down on Britain. Plus obviously staying inside the European Union which has kept the Goths, Vandals and Gepids away since we signed the Treaty of Rome to the great benefit of our agriculture and manufacturing, to name but two, or something.
Immigration.
Labour. Some immigration is good, and some immigration is bad and we’re going to make sure that only the good sort gets done: especially for the possibly bad ones from outside, you know, Europe.
Liberal Democrats. Immigration? What kind of cake is ‘immigration?’ My auntie made me a fruitcake one. It was nice.
Conservatives. Some immigration is good, and some immigration is bad and we’re going to make jolly well sure that only the good sort gets done: especially for the possibly bad ones from outside, you know, Europe.
Say, is there a pattern developing here?
Europe.
Labour. Is the European Union good or what? I mean is it merely utterly, utterly essential to the continued existence of multicellular life on this planet and also so lovely to feed us and clothe us and house us and cure the old folks’ illnesses and protect the poor little match girls, or is it the sure and certain proof of the existence of a Divine and Benevolent Being in the universe?
Liberal Democrats. Now it just so happened that I was skateboarding backwards in the showers and adopting a bent-backed stance when quite by chance I passed through a cloud of randomly-flung globules of Kilo Yankee that someone was tossing about and who should I bump into but the equally-naked but erect President of the European Commission himself - José Manuel Durão Barroso!
Conservatives. Senor Barroso, I just want you to know that I breathe through a blow-hole and possess a non-functioning gag reflex.
So there you have it, dear reader: any high-spending, high-taxing maximal state you like which approaches immigration as being right up there as important as animal welfare and subsidizing sports, and whose defence policy seems not to recognize an organized, well-funded, and determined series of wars against this country and it allies on many fronts. And all pretty much circumscribed by the famously efficient, flexible, democratic European Union. All you have to do is choose whether it's in raspberry, butterscotch or blueberry flavour.
Every Right-wing blogger with a friendly interest towards Americans' freedom and prosperity in these politically uncertain times ought to publicise this, and I hope that my mighty readership will do so too. It raises some important questions about the nature of government and its relationship to the individual...and the direction in which change is going in the USA under the present administration, and as it's long been going here in Britain.
It’s nice to be feeing vindicated as it’s been a dodgy week self confidence-wise.
Thursday night’s Benefits Busters programme from the impeccably Left-wing Channel Four showed us a real-life (and much nicer) Egregious Pauline from A4E whose job is drying out and bucking up benefits mothers who are married to the state.
And doing it for Maggie. Yey.
How times have changed: when the BBC broadcast its last ever not completely welfare-adoring Panorama episode of that name, the United Left went ape. Ape: as in ‘Call out the biplanes and scour the EmpireStateBuilding till there’s not a hair of its bandy legs left.’ How dare single mothers be victimized in this way – the most vulnerable in society, etc, etc.’ But that was under a Tory administration in 1994 and was seen as somehow trying to bolster the Major Cabinet’s half-hearted (or vicious and deadly, depending) attempts to reduce welfare spending.
But thank goodness Flash Gordon (Aha! Saviour of the Universe) has busted us down so badly that Leftie Canalo Quattro admits (and shows in, like, visible figures that the viewers might just remember?) that the income tax and corporation tax together do not cover the social security bill. That’s equal to a quarter of HM Government’s annual expenditure.
Even TheGuardian’s TV critic was only slightly sniffy about the posh bird who gets richer by putting spine and self-respect back into benefits mothers. And so C4 pushed this programme as ‘This government’s attempts to radically reform the welfare state’ – without mentioning who and what made the system so insane in the first place.
There they all were: the twitching bleach-blonde drunk denying that that’s exactly what she was and avoiding the ‘A’ word like it was a 40-hour minimum wage job on a plate, and then the little girl in the big, big body who’d created £75,000 of debt not for herself but to give her tellytubby-lookalike, Pringles-enlarged moppet the best of everything including the top Sky package so she could have all the cartoon channels - ‘I don’t have anything else but the telly’ – which was the biggest TV set I’d seen outside Hollywood blockbusters. Then there was the pinch-faced graduate who had at least been married and then abandoned and obviously hating every minute of being stuck in a classroom with her vulgar facially-pierced doley sisters as if she belonged with them when she clearly thought that she didn’t; and then the cheerful salt of the earth lass who was just like all the other cheerful salt of the earth lasses right down to the same dressed up to the nines for telly I’m on Songs of Praise look.
And the same excuses.
On the bright side, while these girls might not be adept at finding their way into job interviews they seem to have no problem locating the fridge at any time of the day or night: waking or sleeping; in sickness and in health; for ri-… for poorer or for poorer, including possibly in earthquake conditions. Under nuclear attack with Martians scrabbling about and blinded by triffids.
I have to confess that I nearly shed a tear of patriotic pride when I viewed these British porky munters when I realised that in the World Couch Potato Championships our own untrained and ill-equipped girls could likely hold their own in the Women’s’ Freestyle Cellulite against even North America’s best: the great Claudette Mousse de Foie Gras of Montreal, or the greater-still Harlette ‘Hashbrowns’ Winnebago of Lard Ass, IL, or even the truly stupendous Ayesha Benandjerry Washington, of Big Butte, AZ (formerly of New Orleans, LA.)
Hayley; herself a curvaceous Evans-coutured guardian shepherdess (or should that be vaquera?), was pretty touchy-feely and a hand-holder because to lead you have to speak your followers’ language (however mawkish), if only to tell them that they’re wrong. Right from the start she explained gently that if they felt unwell with a sick stomach or a headache and didn’t want to attend a particular session, then she would not understand and wouldn’t hesitate to use sanctions, ie, getting some of their benefit stopped. It felt good, hearing that.
This back-to-work programme is expensive – the company gets £100 per day per ‘mum’ instructed over a six-week course and there’s at least one internet page which rubbishes it as worthless; a website which I can’t find again accused the company from starting up with Ve Fatcher’s help, but do look at the comments thread here for a smorgasbord of defeatism and the responsibility-evading doley equivalent of the ‘universities of crime’ that we hear about from the prison abolition movement and you’ll see on part of what we’re all up against in this lousy system.
Here’s a bit of one thread edited for humour and brevity:
The Victim:
chockollo
Im supposed to be starting this course next week and its for 13 weeks but now im thinking its just a waste of time, i would get anything i could right now if its either call centre, retail or wholesale but its kinda hard to find anything. Does anyone know if its possible to skip this course? If i just say im ill or dont go in because i have an interview or something and then i try to make another claim, will they just put me back on this course?
The Wise One:
Location114
CHOCK there is no way you will get out of it, if you skip it because of a interview you will be asked for proof of interview when you dont show that you will be put on whats called a sanction which means effectively you will get maximum £15 a week for 26 weeks which you will only recieve if you attend the course aswell, its a lot less leiant now then it was before but to cut a long story short there is no way to avoid it unless you have a job that can last in excess of 26 weeks because if you sign back on before 26 weeks you will be signed straight onto new deal to finish your course so there isnt a way out of it. Best advice i can give you is keep your head down and make
The Tribune of the People.
grafikhaus74
All a bit 'you vil go in ze gas chamber.' Screw 'em all. Claim stress, harassment, human rights anything. Play the sytem and don't let them intimidate you into going. Get the name of the New Deal 'adviser' who insists on sending you on this oh-so-inappropriate course and sue them.
Anyone who says 'they're only doing their job', again shades of Aushwitz except the Germans didn't have a choice. Some £16k a year adviser does.
Because obliging people to do something to find work to feed and clothe themselves is exactly the same as murdering innocent folk, right?
The Voice of Experience.
Deerobe
Be very careful about skipping the course. Don't say you are ill. they will take you off JSA and you then have to make a claim for sickness benefit (or whatever it is called now). A friend of mine was ill with a sick certificate and had to call the benefits people when he should have been in bed. He never got any money off them and each time he rang he was given excuses as to why they had not processed his claim. The final one was they claimed that they had not received his sickness certificate. He gave up in the end.
Don't assume you are going to get a job because you have an interview. I have had 5 interviews and still don't have a job.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
The Victim again.
chockollo
I actually have an interview on the day this starts but the interview is in the afternoon, i didnt get a chance to ring up…
(Because the ubiquitous mobile phones don’t work on the dole, except when you produce the bills to prove financial hardship and apply for a Discretionary Living Allowance at The Housing)
…and ask this but does this mean i have to still go in and then they will let me go when its time for the interview?
Phew! Two lots of responsibility in the same day? It’s genocide, I tells yer.
So Haley blousily nagged and lectured and sympathised and got the women parroting positive-thinking slogans and listing goals as she cynically hectored them on how they used the kids as excuses not to work, and how she knew the routine, though she went all meeting-the-boss evangelical soppy at the thought of the MD’s motivational visit (which just has to be an all-time broadcasting coincidence right up there with the white supremacist’s black real father appearing in the studio on daytime television.)
She was right; if they wanted to work, then the takeaways are always recruiting and so what if the kids’d take the P – it’s a living.
And it is a living - for most of them (and the majority got jobs in Poundland in one fell swoop) the system is fixed so that you get more money than benefits at first when you work, and after a year at least you have the same-ish income as benefits plus self-respect and some blood and air circulation round your body. Except…
You have to work. Actually work.
The big girl with the big debts was offered a weekend job as a DJ but turned it down. She felt confident or cheeky enough to come back and lecture Haley that she really means it about getting work and she really, really wanted to be a DJ but the taxis don’t work late on Thursdays and Sundays in Dewsbury…And anyway she didn’t think she should have to work all the hours God sent for a low wage. If they paid her a lot to do the job of her dreams (for so DJing was) then okay, fair enough, she’d do it but she couldn’t think offhand of anyone who’d give her a lift to work. So, basically, the money’s a bit better but so what? It’s a bind and not a fortune, and everyone who’s trying to pay off £75,000 debt deserves good childcare and high wages and employer-provided transportation too, right?
So if you’re not ambitious or self-respecting, you might as well stay at home and watch Oprah (which I do myself from time to time just to remind myself just how lousy The Color Purple was and also to comfort myself with the thought of just how lousy a sequel would have been, Lord preserve us…)
Oh, and the system’s fixed until your family hits critical mass.
One of the salt of the earth cheerful girls had just had her benefits calculated and compared with what life would be like when working. In her case only, as she had 4 children, her earnings plus child benefit and child tax credit and working tax credit and housing benefit and council tax benefit and back to work bonus would not pay as much as child benefit and child tax credit only and housing benefit and council tax benefit do.
So she dropped out and stayed at home.
And that’s where the politicians – of any party at all – could load up votes by the truckload in marginal constituencies and landslide safe ones alike.
All they’d have to do is proclaim that they’re going to keep the system much the same as now, but that they’re going to stop paying extra at two children or after the third, and the whole inter-generational disaster of hereditary welfare dependency will end.
Most of these women can’t possibly look after, discipline, feed and deliver more than three kids safely and on time to schools which they will not immediately disrupt because mum’s too tired or useless or irresponsible to tell them all what’s right and what’s’ wrong and make it stick. Hard-working families would vote just to wipe the smug smiles off their stay-in-bed slacker neighbours’ faces as they have to trundle out to Poundland or wherever. Only the short-haired women and the long-haired men of the howling Left would object to capping generous benefits at replacement population plus one.
Only them…and the weird legislative fruitcake who originally thought up the idea of paying ever-greater child-related benefits when ‘families’ grew. He’s presumably out there somewhere: the Welfare State’s equivalent of the idiot engineer in the Pentagon’s Equipment Commissioning Bureau who insists that every smart pilotless aircraft: every self-programming mobile anti-personnel weapons-system; and every nuclear defence computer network must not only be able to do its basic job, but must also have the capability to become self-aware and rebel against its human masters in a ruthless war of extermination.
Even the latter-day urban mahout Haley agreed as the lass waddled off across the shaking metaphorical horizon to her own people that she couldn’t blame her: money talks.
