It’s difficult to tell…

whether Tom Harris’ tongue is in his cheek, or up his own arse some days…

I SIMPLY cannot understand why, as David Miliband says, the Tories are “playing the man, not the ball” with regards to Tony Blair and the European presidency.

Ahem. A lefty complaining about someone “playing the man, not the ball” … lulz are sure to follow.

Objecting to the former Prime Minister becoming the new president seems peculiarly petty and short-sighted for someone who needs the votes of former Labour voters in order to become PM himself.

looking at the opinion polls, Tom, I’m not convinced that he need worry. People remember Blair as a liar, a spinmeister, a war-monger and an egomaniac. Now he also attends the church of kiddie fiddler. The only way to cast Blair in a positive light is to stand him next to Gordon. Ah yes. Your fellow porridge slurper Brown is running a great campaign for the Tories :-)

Obviously Tony Blair is eminently qualified for the job and would do it well.

If you mean it requires a criminal ego-maniac? Sure.

You’d have to be pretty stupid to dispute that.

Stupid, am I? Play the ball not the man, Tom.

I’m looking forward to seeing you waste away on the opposition benches, finishing your political career in penurious working conditions with the least pay and benefits you’ve ever had as an MP. If your lucky, you might make it to retirement before your beloved party totally collapses through factional ideological fights and calamitous finances.

AJ

Hit!

Fin.

AJ

Conference Call Ennui…

Yesterday:

Today:

AJ

Interesting…

Via Obo…

 

Poor old Basingstoke… lol

AJ

What the blithering fuck???

This is more wrong than… well pretty much everything.

Draconian police powers designed to deprive crime barons of luxury lifestyles are being extended to councils, quangos and agencies to use against the public, The Times has learnt.

The right to search homes, seize cash, freeze bank accounts and confiscate property will be given to town hall officials and civilian investigators employed by organisations as diverse as Royal Mail, the Rural Payments Agency and Transport for London.

The measure, being pushed through by Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, comes into force next week and will deploy some of the most powerful tools available to detectives against fare dodgers, families in arrears with council tax and other minor offenders.

You see that? Used a statutory instrument to hand over unfeckingbelievable powers to local authorities and quangos. Democracy? Fuck that.

Even the fucking coppers are aghast.

The radical extension of the Proceeds of Crime Act, through a Statutory Instrument which is not debated by parliament, has been condemned by the chairman of the Police Federation. Paul McKeever said that he was shocked to learn that the decision to hand over “intrusive powers” to people who were not police was made without consultation or debate.

So are the shysters.

His concerns are shared by leading legal figures, who believe that there is a risk of local authorities abusing the powers to search people’s homes, seize their money, freeze their accounts and confiscate their property. They also see parallels with the spread of counter-terrorist surveillance powers to monitor refuse collections and school catchment areas.

Yes – we have ample evidence that the council will go to fucking town with any powers given to them. Tis the nature of the beast. A who watches the watchers? Another Quango.

An “explanatory memorandum” says that a swath of financial investigators attached to the newly empowered bodies will be accredited, trained and monitored by another quango, the National Policing Improvement Agency. The memo adds that asset seizure will result in financial rewards: “Investigation bodies will receive a share of money recovered as additional funding to incentivise further work in recovering the proceeds of crime.”

Councils and other bodies had access to asset recovery powers before but only with with the authorisation and involvement of the police. Now they will be able to act independently of any police force or law enforcement agency.

And existing powers of confiscation under the Proceeds of Crime act have not been without problems. Ask anyone who has a safe-deposit box.

The extension of such draconian powers to civilian investigators coincides with mounting legal concern about the operation of the law of confiscation. But the Home Office maintained last night that the measures would “boost the fight against crime” and “free up valuable police time”.

Lawyers who specialise in confiscation law have been expressing concern about the extension of the powers for some time. One judge said: “It looks like this has been sneaked through.”

Andrew Bodnar, co-editor of a book on asset recovery law, said that the Proceeds of Crime Act had been carefully crafted and designed but its implementation often left much to be desired. “The theory behind the law is right. But if these powers are to be used to seize the assets of — to take an extreme example — fare dodgers or council tax defaulters, it is very difficult to see how those theoretical aims are being met.

“The extension of these powers should be monitored very closely. The spectre of counter-terrorism powers being used to monitor people’s bin- filling habits, or what school they’re trying to send their children to, should be cautionary.”

Indeed they fucking should.

Talk about driving a coach and horses through democracy and justice. I’ll say it again.

FUCK YOU LABOUR, YOU JACKBOOTED, NATION WRECKING FASCIST CUNTS.

Fuck this bullshit country.

AJ

Pokémog…

You’d never believe what a horrible cheeky shit this one grew up to be.

AJ

One of those days…

My earlier communiqués may have alluded to my less than glittering mood today.

It has been one of those days where, due to lots of stupid crap going wrong, I’ve temporarily lost the will to live. It’s an inescapable response.

What makes me feel even worse is that I realise that other people have had real tragedy to cope with today. Whereas my boiled egg was overcooked (not literally, you mongs).

A little story that sums up my day:

Ordered new sat-nav on the intermong. Arrived today while I was out. Card left. Courier is 12 miles away – a location that is typically a 20 minute drive away. Except I had to work my way though one of those wonderful sets of road-works.

The courier office closes at 7pm, so I hit the road at 6:10pm.

At 6:25pm, I am 2.2 miles from my destination when I hit a queue of traffic.

At 7pm when the couriers close, I am 1.8 miles from my destination.

At 7.15pm I reach the first point, 1.6 miles from my destination, where I could turn round and head home.

On way home, am stuck behind a bunch of timewasters doing 35 in a 60, on a road with no overtaking opportunities.

I turn off to cut across country, following my nose since I am sans sat-nav.

I hack away in the general direction I need to go. After 7 miles, I re-emerge on the road I turned off earlier, 400yds further down.

Epic fucking fail.

AJ

I love to say I told you so…

Last week, apropos of the angry internet lynch mob whipped up on twatter with the help of Fry and Brown, I wrote this:

And everyone’s aghast at this one column. Why?

An angry mob, whipped up on Twitter with help from Stephen Fry and Derren Brown intimidate the Mail and their advertisers into backing the fuck away from the Moir column.

That’s not justice. It’s just an angry mob. Ocholocracy. I presume this is just the brimming over of the hubris accrued in the Twattersphere from the Carter Ruck ruck. I hope it doesn’t continue to snowball.

As if there aren’t more important battles to fight than what some silly woman has written about a dead celeb.

The success and power of Twitter could easily be its downfall as the media and corporates abandon it to the savages.

Well frottage me frontwards with a fine French tapestry if that there twatter ain’t been and gawn and done it again.

Courtesy of Steve Shark:

These days I’m always a little worried by what I’ll find in a list of Twitter ‘Trending Topics’.

All too often it signals that a bandwagon’s just rolled by and dozens of fuckwits have jumped on it.

One of today’s offerings is ‘#aagill’.

A A Gill – author and restaurant critic – has just confessed to shooting a balloon bassoon baboon.

Smell that?

Yes, it’s the heady reek of moral outrage.

And Constantly Furious:

AA Gill, the journalist and restaurant critic, wrote a typically amusing piece for the Sunday Times this weekend, which included a description of how he’d – while in Africa – shot a wild baboon.

Naturally, a huge contingent of weeping bunny huggers have railed against the horror of this act, and yet another fucking vast Twitter witch-hunt has begun. This time the tag is not #janmoir – Twitter ‘got’ her – but #aagill. Yeah, Gill, you’re next.

Fucking mongonet.

AJ

UTA:

I’ve a feeling I’ll be needing this again in the future.

Children…

I don’t have any, so don’t fucking lecture me about my carbon arseprint, you total cunts.

I’ll hand you over to my friends Doug, George and Bill:

And more Bill…

Fin.

AJ

Surrounded by total peasants…

On a train again. In the ‘quite carriage’. It’s evidently half-term because the fucking thing is awash with grey-faced hausfraus, with their noisy selfish scum-encrusted offspring.

Said grey-faces wonder why I scowl at them when they board my carriage with their screaming kids, where I’m sat with my laptop, doing business documentation.

Of course, I have no entitlement to any peace in order to work. Not when compared to the rights of this fucking cunt and her hideous whining offspring. The whole carriage is theirs, to pollute with noise, running around and generally being a fucking pain in the balls.

And I’m in the wrong, and clearly in the way, when one of these horrible children boots me in the knee while cavorting about.

Fucking inconsiderate cunts. Die. And the fucking bitch wondered why I spent the next 20 minutes giving her death-stares, until she dragged her little fucks to another carriage.

I could only focus on the inconsiderate cunts nearest to me, but there were 4 different groups, in the quiet carriage alone, all of whom deserve to see their children put through a rusty bacon slicer.

Peasant scum.

AJ

Don’t have a cow, man…

Or something…

People will need to consider turning vegetarian if the world is to conquer climate change, according to a leading authority on global warming.

In an interview with The Times, Lord Stern of Brentford said: “Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better.”

Direct emissions of methane from cows and pigs is a significant source of greenhouse gases. Methane is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a global warming gas.

Lord Stern, the author of the influential 2006 Stern Review on the cost of tackling global warming, said that a successful deal at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December would lead to soaring costs for meat and other foods that generate large quantities of greenhouse gases.

Perhaps he doesn’t understand that this whole global warming scam is a tax raising hobgoblin, with the intended side-effect of weaning us all off fossil fuels?

Vegetarian. Hah. As if those precious cunts need to feel any more righteous.

AJ

Light bulb: £30

What a fucking breakthrough. £30 will buy you a light bulb that’s as good as a fucking 60p bulb.

Ahhh.. but there’s good news too!

The special bulb is the first environmentally-friendly product which is able to give the same quality and light as a normal 60-watt traditional bulb.

The manufactures, Pharox, say the LED bulb will pay for itself within three years because it costs just 88p annually to run, and lasts for up to 25 years

Up to 25 years you say? Well, I suppose 3 years is up to 25 years. Weasel words. Hmmm. Later in the arsticle:

Mr Otten said his bulbs will last for around 25 years or longer if used for four hours a day.

Well, I’ve got two things to say at this point:

Firstly, the compact flourescent blubs we are being forced to use are neither a bright as claimed, nor do they last as long as is claimed. The EU admitted as much.

The European Union recently admitted energy saving light bulbs are not as bright as their traditional counterparts and claims about the amount of light they produce are "exaggerated".

Secondly, I’m gonna guess that these £30-light-bulb-guys are going to need to raise big venture capital to be able to produce these bulbs en masse. Here’s what every VC is going to say to them:

“And what do we do after everyone has a house full of these bulbs? Sit tight for TWENTY FUCKING FIVE YEARS until they need some more?”

So the VC will give them money on the understanding that they reduce the longevity & durability of these bulbs so that they have to be replaced every 3-5 years. Aside from getting the capital to take these bulbs to a bigger market, this would have two immediate effects:

A) That’s the cost-benefit analysis blown out of the water of there’s a 3 year payback period and a 3-5 year lifespan.

B) Has anyone looked at the dust-to-dust cost of these things in terms of energy to produce, right from mining whatever semiconductors are used, through casting, building, shipping, packaging and disposal? I reckon there’d be a huge impact once the (never gonna get funding) 25 year bulb idea is blown out of the water.

And the article contains a superb twisting of language from a journalist seemingly born to govern.

The new bulb could offer a ray of hope to consumers upset by the EU ban on old-fashioned high-watt bulbs which forces them to opt for energy-saving models, most of which are compact fluorescents bulbs, which normally take longer to reach full brightness.

Let the mongnitive dissonance commence.

AJ

No harm, no foul?

Okay… my title seems out of place with the Times’ headline, but bear with me…

Teenage girls wanting to join violent male gangs are being forced into having sex and ferrying guns, knives and drugs, police and charities have found.

The girls, some as young as 13, want to join gangs to raise their own profile or to seek protection. Often they are swayed by the status given to the senior members of the gang.

When they first join they are told they must have sex with one member of the gang — and then find several of the gang waiting for them.

Now, this is all more than a little seedy, and does sniff of rape… but not to the girls involved, apparently.

What has shocked welfare workers is that the girls accept the situation as normal and do not appreciate that they are being violated.

Errr.. okay.. so.. as young as 13 you say?

In a recent raid by police targeting violent youth crime, 25 females aged between 14 and 39 were arrested in connection with assaults, drug offences and carrying weapons.

Oh.. maybe not then.

Superintendent David Chinchen, who deals with youth violence, said: “Young women are being dragged into the fringes of male criminality and gangs. We are seeing more elements of violence from girls within gangs.” He also said that officers had seen signs of girls becoming involved in sexual violence.

So these same girls who are ‘being violated’, though not, apparently, against their will are also colluding in sexual violence. They don’t sound like victims to me.

Let’s face it, the papers are awash with stories of girls aged 11 and up getting pregnant, pissed, shagging strangers, whatever.

So it’s not clear if the above rape assertion is based on statutory rape, or something more like:

Social Worker: So you had sex with all these boys?

Yolanda: Yeah.. whatever.

SW: But you’re 14 years old.

Yolanda: Whatever. Me dad left when I was a baby. Mum’s been an alcoholic for the last ten years and I’ve been raising my little brother all that time. 14 ain’t a time for playing with dollies in my world Mrs Doogooder.

SW: You were gang raped.

Yolanda: Yo, I got those boys eating out of my hand now. I don’t get no trouble on the street. They didn’t hurt me. No more than my mum does anyway. Or my P.E. teacher. Or the priest.

SW: But… [Ticks ‘RAPE’ box, 5 times.]

Hmm.. Harriet should be pleased.

AJ

Only the BNP takes the fight to the Islamists…

A very thought provoking piece by Mad Mel in the Speccie this week…

Some truisms in there, for sure, lots of words about the disenfranchised, ignored and marginalised British working classes, the disillusionment with the mainstream parties, the ghettos begat by multiculturalism.

The really important observation, though is the apparent correlation between support for the BNP not in areas heavily populated by black or Indian folk, but in areas with high density of Muslins (Pakistani and Bangladeshi mainly).

It is highly relevant that Griffin is an MEP for North West England — and did not stand in the old National Front power base around London. His party’s new appeal is based on a new power base — the north-west and Yorkshire. Research by academics at Manchester University reveals that support for the BNP is highest in areas of high Pakistani and Bangladeshi concentration — but significantly, not where there are concentrations of Indians. Strikingly, BNP support actually falls away steeply in Afro-Caribbean areas.

So to try to damn the BNP as racist misses the point by a mile. Not that the accusation is untrue — despite its attempt to rebrand itself, the BNP remains a racist party with strong neo-Nazi overtones. But it attracts votes talking about religion and culture. Crucially, it is cynically using the Islamisation of Britain as cover for its animus against all Muslims and non-white people.

This is why it is strategically important for the BNP to take up cudgels against radical Islam in the UK. And we all know that someone has to. We also know that the main 3 bunches of spineless Islingtonites aren’t doing. They need to, urgently if they want to stop the BNP.

The fears it exploits are those of ordinary white folk in areas of high Muslim immigration who have watched the transformation of their neighbourhoods from communities of people like themselves into a landscape they no longer recognise. The voters the BNP are seeking are bewildered and distraught that no one in authority seems to notice or care — and that they are dismissed as ‘racists’ for expressing such concerns.

One rule for the mad mullahs, and one for the rest of us you see.

It is this asymmetry of anger which helps the BNP so much. Those who this week seemed to be risking an aneurysm over Griffin’s TV appearance either dismiss the jihadis as an exaggerated problem — or, on occasion, even march behind their incendiary and hate-driven banners. There is no Griffin-style outrage over the regular appearances in the media by the fanatics of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas supporters or Iranian-backed jihadis, even though they endorse terrorism and the extinction of human rights.

She also has some interesting thoughts on the EDL and UAF.

As a result, the debate is allowed to descend into a clash of extremists. Last March, for example, Islamists demonstrated against a parade in Luton of Royal Anglian Regiment soldiers returning from Afghanistan. The jihadis were protected by the police, while the only people arrested that day were locals protesting at this provocation. That event led in turn to a demonstration in Birmingham last August by the self-styled anti-Islamists of the so-called English Defence League (EDL) and other groups.

The cycle continued. The EDL provoked a counter-protest organised by Unite Against Fascism and a day of violent disorder. Similar clashes have subsequently occurred in Luton, Birmingham and in Harrow — brawls invariably characterised in the media as between the ‘far right’ and ‘anti-fascists’.

This is where it gets messy. The so-called ‘anti-fascists’ include a number of Islamic fascists, not to mention far-left boot-boys. As for the ‘far right’, the EDL furiously protests that it has no connections with the BNP and stands against them. But one or two individuals in the EDL have been associated with the BNP in some form or other. Most tellingly of all, EDL leaders have admitted that it is opposed not only to Islamist extremism but to ‘all devout Muslims’ — a BNP-style pitch.

Think on this when Islam4UK (currently throwing a MySQL error) are marching through London this weekend to demand Shariah law in the UK. I have no doubt the EDL and the UAF will both be out in force. Observe how the media report it.

Do read Mel’s article. Tis very good.

As a bit of background, a few choice bits from Old Holborn…

Oh and don’t think it came to this by accident…

The huge increases in migrants over the last decade were partly due to a politically motivated attempt by ministers to radically change the country and "rub the Right’s nose in diversity", according to Andrew Neather, a former adviser to Tony Blair, Jack Straw and David Blunkett.

He said Labour’s relaxation of controls was a deliberate plan to "open up the UK to mass migration" but that ministers were nervous and reluctant to discuss such a move publicly for fear it would alienate its "core working class vote".

Really? Who’d a thunk it.

Unutterable nation-wrecking cunts from day 1.

AJ

Bugs…

This morning I awoke to find one of them there foreign ladybirds, doing a quick 20 lengths in my glass of water.

At breakfast, I deposited Weetabix into a bowl. You don’t usually get ‘gifts’ with Weetabix, so imagine my surprise when a live earwig plopped into my bowl.

I’m now forewarned for the scorpion likely to be in my crisps at lunchtime and the tarantula hiding in my bananas.

Portents of the week ahead. Bleak.

AJ

Timing of the next general election…

So, we’ve had Q3 GDP results around 23rd October. The (as below) inflated Q4 figures will, I suppose appear around 23th Jan 2010. These should be (falsely) encouraging. I expect Gordo anticipates this will be a good (least worst) time to be launching an election campaign.

If I’m right about the negative results likely in Q1 2010, these will appear around 23rd April 2010. But by then, we’ll have long since had enough corporate Q1 results to know that things are grim.

So Gordo’s window for launching a campaign and holding an election is from 23rd January until roughly 15th April (year end returns will be known for a lot of firms) when corporate results start seeping out prior to full ONS GDP results on 23rd April.

So, announce an election, and launch a campaign on 25th Jan. ‘Good’ economic news from Q4 gets Gordo off to a (falsely) encouraging start. He’ll be planning as long and tortuous a campaign as possible, because he’ll want maximum opportunities for the Dib Lems and Blue Labour to fuck up. As I’ve said before, Gordo really has nothing to lose.

All these things considered, I reckon if Gordo remains in charge, we’re looking at an 8th April election.

We shall see.

AJ

Dip once in the ass, and once in the mouth…

Murmurings abound about a ‘double dip’ recession.

Recent economic figures caused much consternation, if little surprise.

Now, Brown’s saying we’ll be back in growth by the end of 2009:

And here’s where the much anticipated double dip will enter it’s second phase of decline.

For the nation as a whole, it has been a year of shitty news on the economy, hectoring from the state about every damned thing we do, utter desperation about the state of education, the NHS, justice, law & order and the ghastly corruption, venality and greed of our elected ‘representatives’. Faith in democracy is draining away. People are fucking pissed off. Depressed. Deprived of joy.

In the meantime, a bunch of people have moved onto tracker mortgages at tasty rates, freeing up disposable income (but not for paying down capital, natch).

In this society, many people acquire and consume goods as an abstract pursuit. An end in itself, which satiates psychological needs imbued by aggressive and invasive advertising. Tis a given, right?

These factors combined with the continuing availability of (not cheap) credit cards will fuel a Christmas consumer binge. We know that much of the economic growth in the last 10 years has been driven by insane consumerism. This binge will drag the economy back on to an upward trajectory. But only for Q4 ‘09.

In January, we’ll all sober up from our binge, open our bank statements and discover we’re gonna have to eat tinned beans on Tesco value toast until payday.

At which point the economy falls back into diminution. Brown’s getting on with the job of taking the tough decisions and, wait.. what?  just fuck off, you shameful bunch of nation-wrecking cunts.

Oh and it wouldn’t be the first time Gordo’s economic snake-oil has given us a W-shaped graph.

Although now that I think about it, rather than a W, it looks like a pair of tits, doesn’t it?

AJ

En cas de voyager au pays de grenouilles..

As I’ll soon be popping over to the land of cheese, wine and militant polo-neck wearing again, I thought I’d brush up on my French.

And I’ve yet to find any better way to do so than this: Eddie Izzard, performing his show in French, in front of a Paris audience.

A warning up front: I take issue with some of the subtitles. Some are materially incorrect. Others are dubious translations of idioms. It’s still very good, though.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

Part 6:

I reckon he’s got balls of steel.

AJ

Dirty foul terrible words…

… are the best ones…

For shame.

AJ

Immigrants…

Taking the jobs of our hard-working aboriginal … err… ladybirds.

Harmonia Axyridis Succinea is Latin for dole bludging asylum seeker.

http://www.harlequin-survey.org/default.htm

AJ