ITV’s London Tonight – a TV programme, apparently – thinks we could give a shit what some overpaid kickyball douchebag thinks about likely cuts to police budgets.
By referral, so does the Tellygiraffe.
Could anyone who thinks Rio Ferdinand has an opinion worthy of merit, regarding anything more important than football, please report to your nearest suicide booth?
I’m not going to bother dissecting Ferdinand’s opinion. I shall simply despair that anyone thought it worthy of an airing.
AJ
This amused me.
I’ll spare you the photo – you can see it a the Telegraph’s site if you so wish. But I warn you: What has been seen cannot be unseen.
Hayley O’Neil, 23, – who also has 20 body piercings – says was also advised to ”stand behind a wall” when she asked a job centre official what post she could apply for.
She eventually left the Job Centre Plus centre in Blackburn Lancs in tears without any interviews lined up after the advisor concluded: ”Who would hire you looking like that?”
Miss O’Neil, who got her first tattoo from her mother as an 18th birthday present said: ”I just felt so humiliated. I couldn’t believe what this guy was saying.
”I said I could take the piercings out but they look a lot worse when they are out."
"The guy said: ‘on first impressions do you think anyone would hire you?’ He said: ‘look at it this way if you were to stand behind a wall – or put a paper bag over your face do you think you would have a better chance?’
I think it’s logically fallacious to suggest that I wouldn’t hire her because of her piercings or tattoos. The reason I wouldn’t hire her is the same reason that she has the piercings in her face: Because she’s a fucking moron.
People. We’re paying for her. And if she doesn’t get a job, it won’t be long before she concludes that her path to security is having some babies. Which we shall also be expected to pay for.
How much longer must we go on like this before the cost/benefit analysis of eugenics becomes too compelling to ignore?
AJ
It is instructive that the unrelenting puritanical clamour for a clamp down on binge drinking comes as overall consumption is falling.
Perhaps they’re in such a rush so that they can get their plans in place, then laud them a success on the back of the existing trend.
It’s happened before, where speed-cameras were installed where there had been a lot of accidents the previous year, and their efficacy ‘demonstrated’ by showing a reduction in accidents that is merely a regression to mean.
Post puritan, ergo propter puritan.
Alcohol consumption in 2009 saw the sharpest year-on-year decline since 1948, figures from the British Beer and Pub Association suggest.
The BBPA said the data showed a 6% decline in 2009
Well… 6% is nothing to be sniffed at, but it’s probably just a bli… oh.
the fourth annual decline in five years.
The association said UK drinkers were now consuming 13% less alcohol than in 2004, below the EU average.
So can anyone tell me what the ‘crack-down’ and the minimum pricing is all about?
Other than control, miserablism and peck-snifferous repression, that is.
Fuck ‘em all.
AJ
My first reaction was to laugh. I had to think again.
WTF? Really? Damn, I’m strong for just driving straight past that McDonalds today, even though I fancied a Big Mac. Yeah.
The logic and ‘science’ in the article is comical in itself. But it was completely eclipsed by the comments that followed it:
Trolling, right?
I wish I could be sure.
AJ
Serial numpty George Michael has been found guilty of possession of a quantity of class B drug (cannabis) and driving while unfit through drugs, after crashing his Range Rover into a shop-front.
The obvious implication here is that it was being under the influence of cannabis that caused him to crash.
Post hoc, ergo wake me up before I go hoc.
So, I call bullshit.
A blood sample was taken and chemicals linked to cannabis were found in his system. He had not been drinking alcohol.
So?
Mr PcPhee said he also wanted to know what impact a prescription sedative may have had on Michael’s behaviour.
What? A fucking prescription sedative? I think we can guess.
Let me tell you something, you ignorant wankers. I know some (professional) people who hardly ever get behind the wheel without a spliff in hand, and yet haven’t had a single accident in 10+ years I’ve known them.
I also know people who are an absolute fucking hazard as soon as they’ve taken something for their hayfever or cold. Let alone a sedative.
Are we done here?
AJ
You’d expect the New Stateman’s scribblers to be at least somewhat sympathetic towards the monkeys at the ClimateCamp in Edinburgh, but I don’t get much sense of that from the picture painted by Laurie Penny for the Staggers blog.
Why does the revolution have to involve so much crap? I’m talking literally. When I arrive at Climate Camp after a six-hour journey by train, bus and a half-hour cross-country hike to the Edinburgh parkland headquarters of the Royal Bank of Scotland, I plonk down my bags and ask if I might use the facilities. A helpful young man with a nice little beard brightly inquires – "Wee or poo?"
This is a question that hasn’t been put to me since I was in nappies, but it’s apparently important – in an effort to leave no trace of their presence on the land, the seven hundred climate activists gathered here for a week of direct action donate their separated excreta to local farmers. What this means in practical terms is a horrifying squat above a gusty, splintered wooden plank, trying hard to hold your breath whilst concentrating on the anti-capitalist slogans daubed on the inside of the door. Clearly, this weekend is going to test our dedication to the limits.
Dedication is the watchword here. By the time I arrive, several activists have already been arrested for breaking into RBS and loudly declaring their refusal to "pay for their crisis", with one having disguised herself as a banker and superglued herself to the front desk. On Friday, the atmosphere at camp is somewhere between a music festival and a military base. The park is full of unwashed students ambling out of tents, but painted signs make it witheringly clear that we are here to work, to exchange ideas and to entirely close down RBS’s base of operations on Monday via a series of democratically organised protest stunts whilst re-examining the links between our financial institutions and climate change: any fun that might occur is entirely incidental to the process.
And consider that RBS has a vast selection of large offices across Edinburgh from which to conduct its business while the soap-dodging Borg collective are flinging their shit at the Gogarburn HQ.
Idiots.
AJ
Sometimes, it really is no wonder that state school pupils are at a disadvantage, if their teachers are this stupid.
The country’s top universities have been called on to come clean about an unofficial list or lists of "banned" A-level subjects that may have prevented tens of thousands of state school pupils getting on to degree courses.
This doesn’t come as a surprise to me – twas obviously the case when I chose my A-Levels over 20 years ago.
The obvious answer was, then as now, to avoid the obviously frivolous subjects. Media studies? Pffffft.
The lists are said to contain subjects such as law, art and design, business studies, drama and theatre studies – non-traditional A-level subjects predominantly offered by comprehensives, rather than private schools.
From this, we are to deduce that comprehensives are failing in their duty to provide pupils with the calibre of subjects and teaching that will enable them to compete with the privately schooled.
Or, perhaps…
Teachers accused universities of putting comprehensive pupils at a disadvantage by refusing to publish their lists. Some claimed the lists were a filter that enabled the most prestigious universities to accept more private school pupils than state-educated ones.
Wait, so rather than the schools that offer A-levels in basket-weaving. it’s the universities who are letting these kids down. Because the universities choose to award places on their most sought after courses to students with good grades in worthwhile subjects?
Tell me this isn’t a bunch of teachers who have elevated a political ideology above the importance of delivering a solid education.
I don’t have kids, but if I did, I’d sell my organs to pay for a private education, if this is the quality of thinking that prevails in the state sector.
Fucking idiots.
AJ
I despair at this sort of utter stupidity.
A bereaved mother has led a protest against the ending of a speed camera partnership scheme in her area.
Presumably the young child she lost was mown down by a speeding driver. No? What then…
Claire Brixey’s son Ashley, 20, was killed in a crash in Limpley Stoke, Wiltshire, in 2004 when the car in which he was a passenger landed upside-down in a swimming pool after the driver lost control.
Well, very sad I’m sure.
Ms Brixey, who lives in Standerwick on the Wiltshire/Somerset border, has been a road safety campaigner since the crash.
In the protest in Trowbridge, she urged a rethink of the decision to end the Wiltshire and Swindon Camera Safety Partnership scheme.
Ms Brixey told Sky News: "We need to show the importance of them (speed cameras) and that we need to keep them, that they are there for a very, very good reason and they do save lives."
And this tragedy happened in 2004 you say? When there were FUCKING LOADS of speed cameras operating in Wiltshire?
They didn’t save your son. What good did they do? Anything?
UPDATE: As pointed out by @TheABD on twitter… regarding the car in which Ms Brixey’s son died:
The driver Richard Joyce, who was twice over the legal alcohol limit and had taken ecstasy before getting behind the wheel
So errr… speed cameras, which have replaced traffic policemen are REALLY GREAT at detecting drugged and drunk drivers. (More from The ABD on this incident and the way it has been manipulated here).
This is precisely why the bereaved should not be given a voice in policy, because they are rendered incapable of rational and objective thought.
Have some dignity and grieve in peace, then move on, instead of dedicating the rest of your life to a misguided march of miserablism.
Fucking idiots.
AJ
UPDATE: I missed another golden quote in that article:
Ellen Booth, campaigns officer for road safety charity Brake, said: "Increasingly, decisions being made on speed cameras are more about politics and less about facts.
Ahaha… Ahahahahaaaaaa. Ahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaasaaaaaa GRRRRRRRRR. Do these people have no self-awareness at all?
For those who don’t know, Brake was set up by a woman who wanted to campaign for speed cameras, reduced limits, more penalties and fines etc, because her son was killed by an HGV whose brakes had failed.
If you want to know some of the FACTS that Brake find deeply uncomfortable, get yourself over to the Safespeed website.
… I give you exhibit A:
LARA CARTER has slept with 20 strangers in the past year – in a desperate and reckless bid to get pregnant.
The self-confessed "sperm hunter" uses ovulation kits to tell her when she is most fertile then pretends to be drunk, throwing herself at unsuspecting fellas and making it obvious she wants sex.
If Lara, 25, meets a man who wants to use a condom, she will offer one from her purse – which she has already pierced a hole in.
Lara, an assistant office manager, says: "This is absolutely the right time for me to have a baby and nothing is going to stand in my way.
"All my friends have babies and I desperately want to be a mum.
"I don’t have a steady boyfriend and feel my time to have a baby is running out. I only need a man to provide his sperm – I would have no interest in seeing him again. That is why I’m a sperm hunter."
It’s really difficult to know where to start, isn’t it?
With no regular boyfriend, Lara’s desire to have a baby has driven her to target strangers as potential fathers to her unborn child.
She says: "I’ve had a couple of proper relationships in the past two years.
"But each time I have mentioned the idea of having a baby, the bloke has run a mile.
"Men my age aren’t that interested in settling down with a kid so quickly into a relationship, so I have given up on trying to have a baby with a partner. I’ve looked into getting a sperm donation but it’s too expensive.
Men her age aren’t interested in getting shackled to someone who is quite clearly mental and a filthy duplicitous slag.
"My nearest private clinic costs £295 for a consultation then it would cost a further £2,000 for a donation.
"There are plenty of men out there willing to have a one-night stand for free."
Oh yes – and lots of free money and free housing for you to raise your little miracle.
I hope she turns out to be barren.
Remember guys – be careful out there. Always provide the condom and always make sure the contents can’t be retrieved after you’ve gone home.
Some of those women are mad, bad and dangerous to nob.
AJ
I really did snigger at this:
Raydon? RAYDON?
FFS.
The couple chose the unusual name after they became convinced they were having a boy, and planned to name it Raymond after Mr Cross’s father.
‘When a little girl came along we had to change our plans – I just sort of made the name up,’ Mr Cross said.
You don’t say…
Now, having had my fun pointing and laughing at the mongs from Coventry, you’d perhaps expect me to turn both barrels on the public sector imbecile who allowed this to happen, after all..
Lisa, 21, of Coventry, West Midlands, said: ‘I just don’t understand how this happened.
‘When I took Raydon to the register office, she was dressed like a little girl. She was wearing pink dungarees, a pink top, and had a pink hat on.
But no, not on this occasion.
A spokesperson for Coventry Register Office said: ‘We apologise to Mr and Mrs Cross for the mistake. We have met with them and the mistake has been rectified and new certificates issued.’
‘The process of registering the birth of a child does give the opportunity on several occasions for the details to be checked by parents before certificates are signed.’
So this is just a case to two complete tools looking to hold everyone else responsible for their own EPIC failure.
AJ
I’ve commented recently on the sick and absurd dedications to Raoul Moat that have appeared on Facebook and elsewhere.
Cameron was asked about these tributes in PMQs yesterday. He pledged to have words with Facebook about it. They told him to take a running jump.
Eminent Tellygiraffe commentator Ed West has posted on the matter:
Now, as much as I’ve already expressed my despair at the mongiferous outpourings of sympathy and support for Moat, I do not support any effort to shutdown or otherwise censor, or ban, these sort of pages.
Apparently, Voltaire never actually said “I disagree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
This disappoints me, but the sentiment is no less fundamentally sound for it.
AJ
![frazer[1]](https://aljahom.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/frazer1.jpg?w=261&h=232 "frazer[1]")
I don’t use Facebook, for reasons that should be self-evident to any sentient being.
But I read this:
Outside Raoul Moat’s home were beginning to accumulate candles, cards, flowers and messages. "Dear Raoul Thomas Moat, may you rest in peace. Our thoughts are with you and your close friends. We were on your side even though we didn’t know you that well," read one, and another: "To Raoul, Always a good friend. Always happy to help a mate. Hope now you’ve found some peace. Gone but never forgotten." One said Moat was "misunderstood".
He killed a man he didn’t know, seriously wounded a woman and a police officer, and assaulted a little girl. But well-wishers wanted to grant him the sentimentalising gestures normally reserved for the victims of crime and accidents.
.. and knew there must be one of those imbeclic and mawkish ‘wall of remembrance’ pages for Moat on Facebook.
Lo and behold:
As you might imagine, there are some legendary messages on there:
By way of some relief, there are plenty of common-sense comments on the wall too. The one that most accords with my own view, though, is this one:
13 years of Labour education, eh? Result.
Also, his ‘pals’ are threatening revenge on the coppers for tasering him.
They should have used a nuclear strike on day 2.
AJ
The medinazis are one lobby that was always going to transcend a change of government, so this shouldn’t be surprising:
You see, chaps, you don’t seem to understand a fundamental point:
WE KNOW IT’S NOT HEALTHY. WE ARE FREE AGENTS. WE MAKE OUR OWN CHOICES.
Some people get the balance ‘right’, others don’t. Although quite why we should take any of these health muppets seriously I don’t know, given their track-record of manifest ideological (or pharmaceutical) bullshit regarding smoking, drinking, eating and recreational drugs.
The driving force for the fact that they feel entitled and compelled to hector us all can be collapsed in one easy move: Their argument always boils down to the cost incurred by the NHS in treating smokers, drinkers, fatties etc.
So we privatise the whole thing and halve national insurance contributions. People can self-insure their health or take out a policy.
At a stroke, the power of doctors’ arguments of ‘public good’, ‘public health’ and ‘cost to the NHS’ all go straight out of the window.
Which is probably why you’ll not find too many doctors supporting my plan. Quite a change from when the NHS was created and 9/10 doctors opposed it.
Remind me though. Is the government’s Chief Medical Officer still an enormously fat bastard?
Apparently not. Lardy Liam’s been replaced by a Quangocrat shrew. Good times.
AJ
They just don’t get it, do they?
Greater Manchester Police (GMP) recorded 353 incidents on June 27, when England suffered their humiliating 4-1 defeat against Germany.
It is the highest number recorded in a day so far this year, save New Year’s Day, the force said.
Kent Police said it witnessed a 400 per cent rise in cases of domestic abuse on the same day.
There were 26 offences reported in the south Kent area, compared to an average weekend total of six.
In an effort to foresee future outbreaks of sandwich-deficit related bitch-slapping, the police are now proposing monitoring into supermarket stock databases to identify fluctuations in purchases of Stella, bacon and bread.
AJ
… may not work when used by actual police.
Part of a motorway was closed and dozens of police officers and a force helicopter were scrambled to the scene after a fake severed arm was spotted by the roadside.
Motorists who spotted the shirt-clad arm with a bloodied stump dialled 999 thinking an horrific accident had taken place.
But when officers converged on the scene – closing the M62 for more than three hours and leading thousands of drivers to be diverted – they found the ‘arm’ to be a plastic Halloween-style toy.
A helicopter, specialist search teams, forensics experts and motorway patrol officers were involved in the Merseyside operation, costing the taxpayer thousands of pounds.
An intriguing case, requiring cutting-edge forensic technology.Merseyside police later confirmed the body part was in fact a Halloween-style plastic prop of the joke shop variety, rather than a prosthetic limb.
Amazingly realistic indeed. If they don’t put “approved by Merseyside CID” on their packaging now, they’re missing a trick.
Oh, did I not mention that CID were involved?
Detective Inspector Tom Keaton, from Knowsley CID, said: ‘This was treated as a major investigation that tied up large amounts of resources and impacted on all areas of policing response in Knowsley.
‘We don’t how this plastic arm came to be in the middle of the road, whether it was placed there deliberately or whether it had fallen out of the window of a passing vehicle.
‘However, Merseyside Police put a lot of resources into this incident and not only has it caused expense both in terms of time and money, it caused traffic chaos for motorists and was extremely upsetting for the drivers who saw the plastic arm in the road.
‘We would like to thank the public for their patience and understanding while this enforced road closure was in place.’
Give. Me. Strength.
Wait… £8.99 each? I think I have an idea. :o)
AJ
I’d really quite like to see one of these in action.
No biggie, right? Meh, right?
Wrong.
The Geemarc Clearsound CL8200 has a top volume of 1,000 decibels, roughly the same as a speeding train, as well as large buttons.
Now, let’s give the fuckwit at The Times the benefit of the doubt just for one moment.
Let’s just suppose that there’s a phone, that costs £90, and produced 1000 decibels.
A German Dane has done the calculations for us, and foretells that to produce a sound of 1 second length at 1000dB would require more energy than the sun will provide in its lifetime.
Elsewhere, let’s see how that 1000dB stacks up:
|
Environmental Noise |
|
| Weakest sound heard | 0dB |
| Whisper Quiet Library | 30dB |
| Normal conversation (3-5′) | 60-70dB |
| Telephone dial tone | 80dB |
| City Traffic (inside car) | 85dB |
| Train whistle at 500′, Truck Traffic | 90dB |
| Subway train at 200′ | 95dB |
| Level at which sustained exposure may result in hearing loss | 90 – 95dB |
| Power mower at 3′ | 107dB |
| Snowmobile, Motorcycle | 100dB |
| Power saw at 3′ | 110dB |
| Sandblasting, Loud Rock Concert | 115dB |
| Pain begins | 125dB |
| Pneumatic riveter at 4′ | 125dB |
| Even short term exposure can cause permanent damage – Loudest recommended exposure WITH hearing protection | 140dB |
| Jet engine at 100′, Gun Blast | 140dB |
| Death of hearing tissue | 180dB |
| Loudest sound possible | 194dB |
So, err. No. The Times are monkey fools who know dick about science.
Meanwhile, here’s a muppet at the The Tellygiraffe who knows dick about technology.
AJ
Updated thanks to Sluggy pedantry.
It’s hard to see what damage the forthcoming strikes could do, given the robust financial position BA is in. Oh.. wait.
£43m lost in 7 days of strikes. Let’s call that £6.2m per day. So another 15 days of strikes is going to cost BA £93million. A drop in the ocean, evidently.
As much as I’d find ranting about the short-sighted, poisonous, imbecility of the strikers cathartic, CF has done the job for me, and with his customary aplomb.
Well done, Unite, you self-interested clique of imbeciles. Well done Derek Simpson, you pointless rabble-rouser.
Well done you mindless snack-vending sheep. A famous courtroom victory: you’ve ‘won’; you’ve got your strike.
Now you can fully exercise your sacrosanct fucking rights to ruin your employer’s business.Go on, teach Willie Walsh a lesson. With a bit of luck, he’ll eventually lose his job – you’d like that, wouldn’t you?
Willie can’t keep the business profitable if you’re all sunbathing in your own gardens, rather than sunbathing free of charge on a layover in Mauritius. Yeah, keep this up and he could be fired, and he’d have to either take another hugely well paid job or retire with all his millions. And that’ll learn him, won’t it? You morons.
By all means, read on.
AJ
The only birds fooled by the organic food scam are the ones who watch Sex and the City and read bird-brained magazines.
British researchers found that birds such as robins and house sparrows "instinctively" preferred non-organic seeds to the more naturally grown varieties as it appeared to provide them with greater nutritional value through the cold months.
When offered both varieties of wheat seed, they were able to discern between the two and ate up to 20 per cent more of the conventional grown variety than the organic.
A bird with a clue:
A bird with no clue:
Obvious when you think about it :o)
AJ
Since he called me tit, I called him a tard. Sort of a tit-for-tard exchange. Then I concluded.
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc time:
AJ
UPDATE: He hadn’t gone away, so I’ve updated.
… or so say several commenters under the Guardian’s report of his case:
It’s satisfying to note that Punkrockhack is wrong in more ways than I’d previously thought possible. Paul did indeed get with his NonIron bird.
I was preparing to write a rebuttal to these people, pointing out that if they think the trauma Paul has undergone, and the collateral destruction of his career (not just a lost job!) is just punishment for an ill-judged but innocent throwaway remark, then they have lost all sense of proportion and I fear for our society of collaborators.
Happily, via Twitter, I see that another bloggist, Graham Linehan has done an excellent and comprehensive job of addressing the attitudes demonstrated above.
What all these people are essentially saying is this: because this country was made less safe by the hasty, reckless, duplicitous way in which Tony Blair took us into war (a war which only yesterday claimed 114 more lives), and because he will never be brought to justice for that, we must live in a state of paranoid readiness, a state of nervous anxiety, a humorless state that cannot tell the difference between a joke and a threat, for the foreseeable future. Because that one, massive crime will go unpunished, we shall all be punished in thousands of interesting ways.
As Robert Harris said, while we stand at airport security with our shoes in our hands, Tony Blair floats unimpeded through another part of the terminal.
As we sit by a ruined Tube station, picking rubble out of our hair, Tony Blair is on his way to a thousand quid a plate dinner in a bulletproof limo.
To those people who put forward the view that Paul is the one at fault here, I’d like to say, it’s not supposed to be like this. We’re not supposed to be scared of our shadows. We’re not supposed to be torturing people. We’re not supposed to be letting people get away with murder. We’re not supposed to be prosecuting people for offhand jokes.
Quite.
AJ
![sirlaimmodel-web[1]](https://aljahom.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/sirlaimmodelweb1.jpg?w=180&h=269 "sirlaimmodel-web[1]")
Al Jahom's Final Word 