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.