Big Brother

CCTV In The Sky

"There is potential for these [maritime] uses to be projected as a 'good news' story to the public rather than more 'big brother'," a minute from the one of the earliest meetings, in July 2007, states."

If you're having secret meetings discussing how to "project" your spying as "good news", that is from Big Brother. They can surveille my arse because I will be doing everything I can to stop this happening.

Democracies like Israel

BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Rights group denies Israel bias

Robert Bernstein said Human Rights Watch had strayed from its original mandate to scrutinise closed societies, not democracies like Israel.

"democracies like Israel"

....

Just run that over in your head a few times, "DEMOCRACIES like Israel". There is no other democracy like Israel, there is no other democracy which is so unashamedly and intrinsically racist and oppresive as Israels.

Fascism Sucks

BBC NEWS | Politics | Protests ahead of BNP appearance

Anti-fascist protesters broke into BBC Television centre ahead of British National Party leader Nick Griffin's appearance on Question Time.

Fascism sucks because Fascists would seek to impose their will on the public, without consultation, without representation, without democracy. They would use force and violence to subdue anyone that disagrees with them. They would, for example, do something like sending a mob to a TV station where a controversial left-wing socialist was about to speak.

Difference?

I have literally seen people on tv (in those god-awful vox-pops) being questioned whether they think the BNP should be allowed on Question Time, and one man said "No, because I don't agree with them". WHAT THE FUCK!? I don't agree with the Tories, I rarely agree with any mainstream politican, but I don't think they should be BANNED from television.

I hate the BNP as much as anyone else in posession of a brain, but angry and violent protests are exactly what Nick Griffin wants to happen so he can paint the left as violent thugs, when ironically it is generally the BNP who are violent thugs, and the left nice peaceful sensible people! Or so I would like to think.

Torture is bad, except when it isn't

MI5 chief defends links with foreign agencies accused of torture | UK news | guardian.co.uk

"Given the pressing need to understand and uncover al-Qaida's plans, were we to deal, however circumspectly, with those security services who had experience of working against al-Qaida on their own territory? Or were we to refuse to deal with them, accepting that in so doing we would be cutting off a potentially vital source of information that would prevent attacks in the west?"

Fuck me, you were to refuse to deal with them!!! You can't have it both ways, constantly issuing statements saying "we do not condone torture and will not work with anyone who tortures", while at the same time saying "we had to secure Britain and using evidence obtained through torture was a price worth paying". Studies show time and time again that people tortured will say anything you want. If I had electrodes on my testicles I would say whatever they wanted to hear to make them stop.

Bruce Forsyth thinks it's 1950

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Forsyth says 'Du Beke was wrong'

"You go back 25, 30, 40 years and there has always been a bit of humour about the whole thing."

This whole thing is a fucking embarrasment to the media. I guess it's hypocritical for me to talk about it, but anyway. It's pathetic the amount of fuss they make over things friends say to each other in private. That comment was between those two and they got over it and moved on, why on earth to the BBC have to issue statements saying "we stand by him blah blah blah" as if he should be sacked? And then Bruce Forsyth opens his big fat mouth when its really nothing to do with him. All it looks like now is he wanted an excuse to rage about "political correctness" and push for "paki" to become common parlance again I suppose. The key word in this quote is "has", where he really means "was". Forty years ago was a long time ago, and most people have learned a thing or two in those 4 decaces. Unfortunately Bruce still thinks its 1950 and doesn't understand that things change.

Fuck Off Tracey Emin

BBC NEWS | UK | Artist Emin may quit UK over tax

Artist Tracey Emin has said she is thinking of leaving the UK in protest about being overtaxed.

In a Sunday Times interview she said she was "very seriously considering leaving Britain," adding: "I'm simply not willing to pay tax at 50%."

Oh please please do! Please fuck off anywhere else! I guess it won't stop her writing her crass and immature newspaper columns and infecting our media everyday, but at least she'll be further away physically.

Still Commited To Disarmament

BBC iPlayer - The Andrew Marr Show: 27/09/2009

an exclusive interview with Prime Minister Gordon Brown

Here's what Brown said regarding nuclear weapons:

Every country round that table is now commited to a new non proliferation treaty. Those nuclear weapon states are all now, included britain, commited to reductions of their nuclear arsenals, where that can be done...we are on the verge of a very exciting breakthrough in non proliferation agreements

Wow, if only someone had thought of that before? You know, some kind of Treaty where countries agree to reduce their nuclear arsenals? Why don't I propose a draft statement:

Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective
measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear
disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective
international control.

Wait a minute, does that paragraph sound familiar to anyone? Oh yes! It's Article 6 of the mysteriously already existing Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, which the United Kingdom signed in 1968, and then proceeded to undertake no steps at all to reduce our nuclear arsenal.

Look's like Brown's a bit late then, I guess he'll have to call his Treaty the NNPT 2.0?

Doctors Make People Better

BBC NEWS | UK | Doctors 'must report knife crime'

Doctors should tell police every time they treat a victim of gun and knife crime, new guidelines from the General Medical Council will state.

No no no no no. This isn't what doctors are for. Doctors are for making people better. The Police are the ones who are supposed to find out whodunnit. This will only lead to a situation where victims of gang violence will be to scared to hospital, and will have to setup gang doctors like they have on the Wire and the Sopranos etc.

Worst.Trial.Evar.

LRB · Gareth Peirce: The Framing of al-Megrahi

Even if the science that convicted al-Megrahi had not offended against every minimum standard, then the second pillar of the prosecution case, his identification by Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper, would remain spectacular in its noncompliance with any safeguard. He described al-Megrahi as ‘6’0’’’ (he was 5’8’’), ‘50 years old’ (he was 37), and ‘hefty’; said that he ‘had been to the shop before and after’, ‘had been there only once’; that he ‘saw him in a bar months later’; that he ‘will sign statement even though I don’t speak English’; that al-Megrahi ‘was similar but not identical’, ‘perhaps like him but not fully like him’, and, fatally for any identification of al-Megrahi in the first place, that he was ‘like the man in the Sunday Times’ (in other words, like Abu Talb, whose picture Gauci had initially identified). But Gauci’s evidence was needed and, reports suggest, handsomely rewarded. He apparently now lives in Australia, supported by millions of US dollars.

Wow. This piece really blew my mind, I'm a bit overwhelmed. Articles like this are often long winded with only tenuous suspicions that things weren't quite right, but pretty much every paragraph here contains evidence that blows the trial wide open. Whilst it by no means proves that Megrahi was innocent, it proves by a long way that this was one of the most farcical and corrupt trials ever, and no conclusions it made can be taken seriously.

Chris Evans Owns A Golfer

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Evans 'messed up' Radio 1 stint

His professional golfer and model Natasha Shishmanian gave birth to their son, Noah, earlier this year.

Interesting, is there anywhere one of us Joe Public's can purchase a brand new Professional Golfer and Model? Do we get to choose the name?

Selling Guns To Murderers

So...here's what the government tells us is a logical situation. They are going to help victims of the IRA get compensation from Libya, because Libya supplied the IRA with explosives which were used to kill innocent people. Thus Libya is bad people. Any thing wrong so far? I don't think so. Let's continue.

What with Libya being "bad people",

the government body that supports arms companies told a meeting there had been "high-level political intervention" to boost Britain's arms trade with Libya

So at the same time as trying to claim compensation from murderers, we are actively trying to sell them more guns.

I am obviously too simple minded to understand politics aren't I?

Don't Text And Drive, Or Something...

Well that was some horrific shit. I couldn't even bear to watch it after about 20 seconds. Don't text and drive I guess!

Drug Prohibition

The war on drugs is immoral idiocy. We need the courage of Argentina | Simon Jenkins | Comment is free | The Guardian

This concept marries intellectual idiocy – that supply leads demand – with practical impossibility. But it is golden politics. For 30 years it has allowed western politicians to shift blame for not regulating drug abuse at home on to the shoulders of poor countries abroad.

Yes, it's not "our" fault, it's "theirs". If only there wasn't a constant supply of drugs from overseas, British people would completely stop trying to find ways of getting high and blanking out the horrors of inequality and jingoism that capitalism has brought us over the last 50 years.

This is a great article by Simon Jenkins and something I completely agree with. Drug addicts are patients, not criminals.

I'm The Mayor Of Baltimore

Iain Dale's Diary

Alex Hilton has finally got a hoax right. A couple of years ago he tried to convince the world that Margaret Thatcher had died. Yesterday he launched a website pretending to be the Mayor of Baltimore, who was "outraged", I say "outraged" by Chris Grayling's comments likening some British city centres to the Baltimore based series The Wire. Despite there being plenty of clues on the website (copyright R Monkee, British spelling etc) some pretty big media institutions fell for it hook, line and sinker.

Check THIS out from The Guardian. Even the Baltimore Sun fell for it. And so, unbelievably did the BBC.

Pretty hilarious stuff, I'm pretty shocked that the BBC and the Guardian would just copy and paste this and assume it's real, they obviously didn't call the real Mayor of Baltimore to check. The funniest part though is the comments that Alex Hilton left embedded in the HTML Source of the site:

OK, so I'm just having a bit of fun at Chris Grayling's expense.
Sitting in the office on a hot August afternoon, I was fantasising
that I was Mayor of Baltimore and how annoyed I would be.
I hope you very quickly picked up that this was a spoof.
Didn't mean to break any laws or ethical mores - please don't
extradite me if I have unwittingly done so. Hope you appreciate the
humour, Alex Hilton, alexhilton@gmail.com - 07985 384 859

(Via Plato Says)

Free For £10!

BBC NEWS | Technology | Spotify app approved for iPhone

The application will be free, but will require the user to have a premium Spotify subscription, which costs £10.

Does not compute. "Hey, give us £10 for no reason, and we'll give you an application ABSOLUTELY FREE!"

Anyway though, doesn't this kind of break music forever. Everyones crying about Pirate Bay and BitTorrent and whatever, but now look, for £10 a month you can listen to any song ever, wherever you are. Why would you pay for music the old way?

Pokemon Is Exercise

Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In Japan, the games will be bundled with a peripheral called the Poké Walker, a pedometer that resembles a Poké Ball which can connect to the Nintendo DS game card via infrared signals (in a fashion similar to another Nintendo DS game Personal Trainer: Walking) and can "hold" a Pokémon. Walking with a Poké Walker holding a Pokémon will increase both its experience and closeness, as well as the player's "watts", an in-game currency that can be used to catch wild Pokémon and shop for items.

Oh My God....they just worked out how to make kids walk all freakin day. The more you walk the better your Pokemon is, RUN CHILDREN! RUNNN!!!!!

As long as they're not as clever as these kids and just attach the pedometers to their dogs...

Technorati Tags: pokemon, pedometer, exercise, children, nintendo

People Think They Deserve Everything

BBC NEWS | Northern Ireland | Foyle and West | Pensioner's £67,000 power bill

"In this day and age, it's just not acceptable."

Of course I should be able to live in the middle of fucking nowhere and expect the electricity companies to pay £67,000 to lay cables just for one person who's probably going to die soon. It's like setting up a caravan in the middle of the forest and being like "HEY THERE'S NO INTERNET HERE, OR WATER! WHAT A FUCKING DISGRACE!"

Idiot.

Charlie Brooker Is Old And Tired!

Charlie Brooker's screen burn: 22 August 2009 | Culture | The Guardian

Brand-new gameshow The Cube (Sat, 8.30pm, ITV1) is nice. And it's good.

Wow, he's nice about a TV program. I literally don't remember the last time that happened, he must be losing his youthful anger and cynicism!

"Opinion" Does Not Equal "Unpatriotic"

BBC NEWS | Politics | NHS attack by MEP 'unpatriotic'

Health Secretary Andy Burnham has accused a Tory MEP who attacked the NHS on American TV of being "unpatriotic".

What bullshit. The whole notion and concept of the word "Patriotic" pisses me off anyway. This current furore suggests that the patriotic thing to do is to support whatevers happening in your country and never EVER question whether it could be done better. All this guy has done is said that he doesn't think the NHS is the most efficient way of running a healthcare system. He doesn't want people to die, he wants people to be healthier, and while I disagree with his view he's not evil or "unpatriotic". This is the kind of bullshit thats come over from America, where suddenly anyone who rocks the boat is "unpatriotic". Well fuck you Britain! I'm unpatriotic!

No Nails, No Problem

BBC NEWS | UK | Ministers deny torture collusion

"Operations have been halted where the risk of mistreatment was too high. But it is not possible to eradicate all risk," they wrote.

Yeah, apart from like, the time when British Intelligence Officers went out and visited Binyam Mohamed after he'd had three fingernails ripped off his left hand. That wasn't judged to be too high risk apparently.