andygates | Entries tagged with politics

People have been asking me what I think about this. I think it's rubbish, and here is why:

The death rate is so vanishingly low that a law specializing in death by dangerous trousers is more urgently needed. Seriously, we have an accident category for them in A&E and everything.

The crime is already covered by manslaughter. Only a petrolhead would fail to spot that, because they have special super-lax and weakly applied laws to make them feel better about screwing up. Or maybe they have spotted it and are keeping stum in case they feel "the full force of the law" themselves. Imagine how people would drive if they expected a manslaughter charge for killing people?

It's a tribal sop to Clarkson Man, who feels aggrieved by fuel prices and such, and who likes to see those naughty cyclists kicked. This fits in with the current Hammond transport vibe, which is so petrolheaded that it looks like he wants to replace Hamster Hammond. That would make Cameron into Captain Slow, which is a pity because I like Captain Slow, but he is posh and they are all mates. Yes, your transport policy is being run by Top Gear.

Note that every discussion you have with anyone about this proposed law changes within a couple of sentences from death to red lights and chavs on the pavement. It's nothing to do with the issue. It's pure vacuous politics and it stinketh.

So, the Tories are in power and their special friends in the NFU are after some sweet sweet blood, or so it seems. There's only one bit of large-scale science done on badger culls here -- and it says, unequivocally, that it'll suck: it won't be effective in stopping TB, it won't be cost-effective, it'll mess with an apex predator and that's never straightforward, it's basically dumb knee-jerk thinking.

So, of course, the government will do what it always does with science it doesn't like, and ignore it utterly. The author's even turning up to campaign meetings now. The RSPCA are doing the big sane campaign thing here (sign up! write in!); there will doubtless be less calm campaigns from the usual suspects as the whole thing gets momentum.

Instead of vaccination and movement restrictions (the NFU wanted those lifted, talk about petards), it'll be a spasm of head-taking, cull sabbers getting in fights, and no reduction in bloody TB in cattle or sodding badgers. Pathetic.

Current Mood: frustrated

Vile Nazi twunt Nick Griffin has been egged when trying to hold a press conference.

Good.

This isn't about democracy or him being properly elected. He's just vile racist cretin who deserves to be hounded mercilessly until he has a lovely public nervous breakdown and ends up at the Priory next to that singing woman and some druggy celebs.

I mean, really, this is the public face of people who think that Lenny Henry, Freema Agyeman, Zeinab Badawi and Gok Wan are bad and need to be kicked off this sceptered isle for not being British enough. Lenny's a Brummie! Freema grew up in Hackney! Zeinab's dead posh and Gok's a Leicester boy.

So let's be absolutely clear: Griffin's the figurehead of people as foul, disruptive and stupid as Fred Phelps. That's a very special, very elite shitlist. These are the very zenith of putrid idiocy. Phelps, you'll recall, was barred from coming to the UK on public order grounds: so many people think he needs a slapping that the mere hint of his feculent stench provokes breach of the peace. Let's hope the same applies to Griffin.

And if you hear of him coming to Devon to speak, please let me know. I have an omelette that needs making.

The BNP leafleted me. I'd be happier if someone with ebola had crapped their colon out on my doormat.

The leaflet is as you'd expect, a combination of frightened, self-important and whiny froth - standard far-right stuff. Thoughts ran to wrapping it round a brick and returning it on a ballistic trajectory to its sender: the local racist dunderheads are listed in that leaked membership list. But that's just bad vibes on top of bad vibes, and Hulk doesn't want to smash tonight. What to do, though? This sort of memetic soiling needs something to take away the taste... a unicorn chaser.

Et voila:

Tips: Folding guide here. For a full unicorn you need two squares; perhaps I should have made the arse end instead? To get a square, cut the top of the flyer off along the "Because we've earned the right" whine. You get to keep the pretty picture of a Spitfire then - which, for maximum irony, is Polish.

The panopticon isn't always a bad thing. The BNP's* membership list has been leaked online. You can even check it yourself and see just how many knuckle-dragging racists there are in your town! And for giggles, here's one of their blogs: you can smell the panic among the big strong boys who sign on as "anonymous".

Bless. They're worried that they might lose their jobs (plenty of jobs formally preclude political activism such as party membership). Give 'em a week and they'll find a way to blame it on the Muslims, darkies or Poles, you bet.

Yes, I'm gloating. Light exposes cockroaches. You see, I'm a kind of tolerance-fundamentalist. That means that I'm fiercely antagonistic to intolerance. This has to be the case: if tolerance tolerates intolerance then it gets swamped and less tolerant; to be maximally tolerant, it must be maximally intolerant of intolerance.

No, I won't repeat that three times when drunk.

How could this secret club have done better? Well, they could have encrypted everything, but this looks like a deliberate leak: someone with a grudge published the list. Can't really defend against that one. How does this affect other secret clubs which, maybe, don't stink as much? Will my Sea Shepherd sponsorship come out? Or my Masonic Lodge dues? Maybe it's time for real secret societies to come back: ones with handshakes and deadly vows, and no access to email. I don't think it will work.

So: don't join anything you'd be embarrassed to be identified as a member of. Anywhere. Ever.

Meanwhile, I have to work out what to do to the three scaredy-cat thugs in my town. Suggestions?

* Basically homegrown nazis, "send-em-home" Little Englander racist cretins. (wiki)

Current Music: sadtrombone.com

Obama's world tour is going great guns: they took him seriously in the Middle East and in Berlin two hundred thousand people turned out pretty much to anoint his feet with oil. Two hundred thousand for a candidate they can't even elect. Seems that he's pitching this as the Next Leader Of The Free World Tour and the rest of us out here in the world, we pretty much like that.

Let's face it after eight years of Captain Catastrophe, Barney the frakking Dinosaur would be an improvement but I'm not seeing simple relief here, I'm seeing desperate relief and a thread of actual, genuine, Kennedy-flavoured optimism. Crikey.

I wonder how much impact this will have on his electability in the US (you know, where his voters are)?

It turns out that the UK did allow US 'rendition' flights to refuel after all. Our wretched and gutless politicians have fessed up to playing ball with this vile criminal practice. As a British voter, I'd just like to apologise for not getting these damned idiots out of power. Their actions shame the nation, and shame me. I'll try harder to get the rancid goat gobblers out next time.

Current Mood: infuriated and ashamed

Bush, attending the G8 conference, has agreed with the others that climate change is a problem, carbon emmissions are a main driver and that "Global greenhouse gas emissions must stop rising, followed by substantial global emission reductions". And while green organisations are decrying the lack of numbers or binding detail, everybody seems to be just slightly gobsmacked that Bush, of all people, has gone along with this. Green-heads in the UK, from a quick straw-poll, expected the existing la-la-la-I'm-not-listening policy to continue until he left office.

Maybe it's just reality catching up with the administration. Back in 2004 this was ascribed to a Bush aide by Ron Suskind:

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Well, the reality-based community may have been sidelined in favour of dogma and ideology, but reality has the trump card. It really really exists, in the real world where the hatstands are. And here, when your head comes away from your neck, it's all over. It doesn't matter a damn how neat your ideology is if the weather's turned batshit.

Current Mood: calm

Please explain to me just who we're going to nuke?

For extra credit, compare to insurance against badger attack: £1000 premium, and we promise to gas the one wot bit you. Explain how Trident offers a substantially more well-priced policy against a more credible threat.

Please explain to me just why this is anything more than reluctance to leave the Big Swinging Dicks Club?

Current Mood: cynical

This one should get

gedhrel's blood boiling: Sequoia Voting Systems's machines have a little button on the back that puts them into Manual Mode where you can vote all you like. Mmm, secure and traceable. Full dirt at the declaredly-partisan Smirking Chimp (link fixed!).

So, all you Americans lucky enough to be faced with a Sequoia machine and unhappy with untraceable, riggable, stealable elections sold on the backs of tech from prominent Party donors (and they can't prove it ain't so), press that button and vote a gazillion times for the most absurd candidate you've got. That way, you void the thing without putting a main-party fight on it, and the ludicrous and obscene pork-barrel that is electronic voting can be put to a decent death (or at least to decent standards, which are out there and which everyone who gives a damn knows include a freaking PAPER TRAIL).

If you get arrested for vote-interference I will bail you with my pocket money and stand you the price of a beer, too.

Current Mood: cynical

Note it in your diaries, it's the day that the USA gave up on all that "shining beacon" rubbish and signed torture into law. The moral authority of that country is now on a par with, say, China, or Burma. It seems you can indeed boil three hundred milllion frogs alive by just turning up the temperature slowly.

Just think, this time next year you could be celebrating the first anniversary of institutionalised, legal torture. How neat! Quick, get an Abu Ghraib torture hoodie for your kids for Hallowe'en!

You could wrap copper wire around Jefferson's coffin and generate enough power to light a small town, he's spinning that fast in his grave. You Americans who read this: how did you let your country get this bad? How do you tolerate it? Have you no shame?